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NOTICE. 

As the plan of these volumes does not encourao-e foot- 
notes, I wish to say that, besides the biographies prefixed 
to the various editions of Spenser, there are two series of 
publications which have been very useful to nie. One is 
the series of Calendars of State Papers, especially those on 
Ireland and the Carew MSS. at Lambeth, with the pref- 
aces of Mr. Hans Claude Hamilton and the late Professor 
'Irewer. The other is Uv. E. Arbcr's series of reprints of 
)ld English books, and his Transcript of the Stationers' 
Ftegisters— a work, I suppose, witliout parallel in its in- 
formation about the early literature of a country, and 
edited by him with admirable care and public spirit. 1 
wish also to say that I am murli indebted to Mr. Craik's 
excellent little book on Spenser and It is Poetry. 

March, 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGH 

Spenser's early Life 1 



CHAPTER II. 
The new Poet — The Shepherd's Calendar .... 29 

CHAPTER HI. 
Spenser in Ireland 51 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Faerie Queene — The First Part 8(J 

CHAPTER V. 
The Faerie Queene 117 

CHAPTER VI. 

Second Part of the Faerie Queene — Spenser's 
last Years (1590-1599) 165 



SPENSER. 

CHAPTER I. 

Spenser's early life. 

[1552-1579.] 

Spenser marks a beginning in English literature. He was 
the first Englishman wlio, in that great division of our 
history which dates from the Reformation, attempted and 
achieved a poetical work of the highest order. Born aboul. 
the same time as Hooker (1552-1554), in the middle oi 
that eventful century which began with Henry VIII., and 
ended with Elizabeth, he was the earliest of our great mod- 
ern writers in poetry, as Hooker was the earliest of the 
great modern writers in prose. In that reviving English 
literature, which, after Chaucer's wonderful promise, had 
been arrested in its progress, first by the Wars of tht 
Roses, and then by the religious troubles of the Reforma- 
tion, these two were the writers who first realized to Eng- 
lishmen the ideas of a high literary perfection. These 
ideas vaguely filled many minds; but no one had yet 
shown the genius and the strength to grasp and exhibit 
them in a way to challenge comparison with what had 
been accomplished by the poetry and prose of Greece, 

1* 



2 SPENSER. [chap. 

Rome, and Italy. There had been poets in England since 
Chaucer, and prose-writers since Wy cliff e had translated 
the Bible. Surrey and Wyatt had deserved to live, while 
a crowd of poets, as ambitious as they, and not incapable 
of occasional force and sweetness, have been forgotten. Sir 
Thomas More, Roger Ascham, Tyndale, the translator of 
the New Testament, Bishop Latimer, the writers of many 
state documents, and the framers, either by translation or 
composition, of the offices of the English Prayer -Book, 
showed that they^ understood the power of the English 
language over many of the subtleties and difficulties of 
thought, and were alive to the music of its cadences. 
Some of these works, consecrated by the highest of all 
possible associations, have remained, permanent monuments 
and standards of the most majestic and most affecting 
English speech. But the verse of Surrey, Wyatt, and 
Sackville, and the prose of More and Ascham, were but 
\ioble and promising efforts. Perhaps the language was 
xiot ripe for their success; perhaps the craftsmen's strength 
and experience were not equal to the novelty of their at- 
tempt. But no one can compare the English styles of the 
first half of the sixteenth century with the contemporary 
styles of Italy, with Ariosto, Machiavelli,Guicciardini, with- 
out feeling the iumiense gap in point of culture, practice, 
and skill — the immense distance at which the Italians were 
ahead, in the finish and reach of their instruments, in their 
power to handle them, in command over their resources, 
and facility and ease in using them. The Italians were 
more than a century older ; the English could not yet, like 
the Italians, say what they would ; the strength of English 
was, doubtless, there in germ, but it had still to reach its 
full growth and development. Even the French prose of 
Rabelais and Montaigne was more mature. But in Spen- 



i] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. >. 

ser, as in Hooker, all these tentative essays of vio-orous but 
unpractised minds have led up to great and lastiuo- works. 
We have forgotten all these preliminary attempts, crude 
and imperfect, to speak with force and truth, or to sing 
with measure and grace. There is no reason wliy they 
should be remembered, except by professed inquirers into 
the antiquities of our literature; they were usually clumsy 
and awkward, sometimes grotesque, often affected, always 
hopelessly wanting in the finish, breadth, moderation, and 
order which alone can give permanence to writing. Thev 
were the necessary exercises by which Englishmen were 
recovering the suspended art of Chaucer, and learning to 
write; and exercises, though indispensably necessary, are 
not ordinarily in themselves interesting and admirable. 
But when the exercises had been duly gone through, then 
arose the original and powerful minds, to take full advan- 
tage of what had been gained by all the pi-actising, and to 
concentrate and bring to a focus all the hints and lessons 
of art which had been gradually accumulating. Then the 
sustained strength and richness of the Faerie Queene be- 
came possible; contemporary with it, the grandeur and 
force of English prose began in Hooker's Ecclesiastical 
Polity ; and then, in the splendid Elizabethan Drama, 
that form of art which has nowhere a rival, the highest 
powers of poetic imagination became wedded, as they had 
never been before in England or in the world, to the 
real facts of human life, and to its deepest thoughts and 
passions. 

More is known about the circumstances of Spenser's life 
than about the lives of many men of letters of that time ; 
yet our knowledge is often imperfect and inaccurate. The 
year 1552 is now generally accepted as the year of his 
birth. The date is inferred from a passage in one of his 



4 SPENSER. [cHAPv 

Sonnets,' and this probably is near the truth. That is to 
say, that Spenser was born in one of the last two years of 
Edward VI. ; that his infancy was passed during the dark 
days of Mary ; and that he was about six years old when 
Elizabeth came to the throne. About the same time were 
born Ralegh, and, a year or t\vo later (1554), Hooker and 
Philip Sidney. Bacon (1561), and Shakespere (1504), 
belong to the next decade of the century. 

He was certainly a Londoner by birth and early train- 
ing. This also we learn from himself, in the latest poem 
published in his life-time. It is a bridal ode {Prothala- 
mion), to celebrate the marriage of two daughters of the 
Earl of Worcester, written late in 1596. It was a time in 
his life of disappointment and trouble, when he was only 
a rare visitor to London. In the poem he imagines him- 
self on the banks of London's great river, and the bridal 
procession arriving at Lord Essex's house ; and he takes 
occasion to record the affection with which he still re- 
garded " the most kindly nurse'' of his boyhood. 

"Calm was the day, and through the trembling air 
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play, 
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay 
Hot Titan's beams, whieh then did glister fair : 
When I, (whom sullen care, 
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay 
In Princes Court, and expectation vain 
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away, 
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain,) 
Walkt forth to ease my pain 

" Since the winged god his planet clear 



Began in me to move, one year is spent : 
The which doth longer unto me appear 
Than all those forty which my life outwent." 

Soyinet LX., probably written in 1693 or 1694. 



i.j SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 

Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames ; 

Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems, 

Was painted all with variable flowers, 

And all the meads adorned with dainty gems 

Fit to deck maidens' bowers, 

And crown their paramours 
Against the bridal day, which is not long : 
Sweet Thames ! run softly, till I end my song. 

* * * * * * ♦ 

At length they all to merry London came. 
To merry London, my most kindly nurse, 
That to me gave this life's first native source. 
Though from another place I take my name, 
A honse of ancient fame. 

There, when they came, whereas those bricky towers 
The which on Thames broad aged back do ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whilome wont the Templar Knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride : 
Next whereunto there stands a stately place, 
Where oft I gained gifts and goodly grace^ 
Of that great I^ord, which therein wont to dwell ; 
Whose want too well now feels my friendless case ; 
But ah! Jierefits not well 
Old woes, but joys, to tell 
Against the bridal day, which is not long : 
Sweet Thames ! run softly, till I end my song : 
Yet therein now doth lodge a noble peer,^ 
Great England's glory and the wide world's wonder, 
Whose dreadful name late through all Spain did thunder, 
And Hercules two pillars, standing near. 
Did make to quake and fear. 
Fair branch of honour, flower of chivalry ! 
That fiUest England with thy triumph's fame, 
Joy have thou of thy noble victory, ^ 

^ Leicester House, then Eseex House, in the Strand. 

« Earl of Essex. 3 ^^ Cadiz, June 21, 1598. 



6 SPEXSEK. [chap. 

And endless happiness of thine own name 

That promiseth the same. 

That through thy prowess, and victorious arms, 

Thy country may be freed from foreign harms ; 

And great EUsa's glorious name may ring 

Through all the world, filled with thy wide alarms.'" 

Wlio Lis father was, and what was his employment, we 
know not. From one of the poems of his later years we 
learn that his mother bore the famous name of Elizabeth, 
which was also the cherished one of Spenser's wife. 

" My love, luy life's best ornament, 
By whom my spirit out of dust was raised."* 

But his family, whatever was his father's condition, cer- 
tainly claimed kindred, though there was a difference in the 
spelling' of the name, with a house then rising into fame 
and importance, the Spencers of Althorpe, the ancestors of 
the Spencers and Churchills of modern days. Sir John 
Spencer had several daughters, three of whom made great 
marriages. Elizabeth was the wife of Sir George Carey, 
afterwards the second Lord Hunsdon, the son of Eliza- 
beth's cousin and Counsellor. Anne, first. Lady Compton, 
afterwards married Thomas Sackville, the son of the poet, 
Lord Buckhurst, and then Earl of Dorset. Alice, the 
youngest, whose first husband, Lord Strange, became Earl 
of Derby, after his death married Thomas Egerton, Lord 
Keeper, Baron Ellesraere, and then Viscount Brackley. 
These three sisters are celebrated by him in a gallery of 
the noble ladies of the Court,^ under poetical names — 
" Phyllis, the flower of rare perfection ;" " Charillis, the 

1 Sonnet LXXIV. 

* Colin Cloufs come Home again, 1. 536. Craik, Spenser, i. 9, 10. 



I.] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 1 

pride and primrose of the rest ;" and " Sweet Amaryllis, 
the youngest but the highest in degree." Alice, Lady 
Strange, Lady Derby, Lady Ellesmere and Brackley, and 
then again Dowager Lady Derby, the "Sweet Amaryllis" 
of the poet, had the rare fortune to be a personal link be- 
tween Spenser and Milton. She was among the last whom 
Spenser honoured with his homage : and she was the first 
whom Milton honoured; for he composed his Arcades to 
be acted before her by her grandchildren, and the Masque 
of Comus for her son-in-law. Lord Bridgevvater, and his 
daughter, another Lady Alice. With these illustrious sis- 
ters Spenser claimed kindred. To each of these he dedi- 
cated one of his minor poems ; to Lady Strange, the Tears 
of the Muses ; to Lady Compton, the Apologue of the Fox 
and the Ape, Mother Huhberd's Tale ; to Lady Carey, the 
Fable of the Butterfly and the Spider, Muiopotmos. And 
in each dedication he assumed on their part the recogni- 
tion of his claim. 

" The sisters three, 
Tlie honour of the noble family, 
Of which I meanest boast myself to be." 

Whatever his degree of relationship to them, he could 
"bardly, even in the days of his fame, have ventured thus 
publicly to challenge it, unless there had been some ac- 
knowledged ground for it. There are obscure indications, 
which antiquarian diligence may perhaps make clear, which 
point to East Lancashire as the home of the particular 
family of Spensers to which Edmund Spenser's father be- 
longed. Probably he was, however, in humble ci^rcum- 
stances. 

Edmund Spenser was a Londoner by education as well 
as birth. A recent discovery by Mr. R. B. Knowles, fur- 



8 SPENSER. [cHAr. 

ther illustrated by Dr. Grosart,' has made us acquainted 
with Spenser's school. He was a pupil, probably one of 
the earliest ones, of the grammar school, then recently 
(1560) established by the Merchant Taylors' Company, un- 
der a famous teacher, Dr. Mulcaster. Among the manu- 
scripts at Townley Hall are preserved the account books of 
the executors of a bountiful London citizen, Robert Now- 
ell, the brother of Dr. Alexander Nowell, who was Dean 
of St. Paul's during Elizabeth's reign, and was a leading 
person in the ecclesiastical affairs of the time. In these 
books, in a crowd of unknown names of needy relations 
and dependents, distressed foreigners, and parish paupers, 
who shared from time to time the liberality of Mr. Robert 
Nowell's representatives, there appear among the numer- 
ous "poor scholars" whom his wealth assisted, the names 
of Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes. And there, 
also, in the roll of the expenditure at Mr. Nowell's pompous 
funeral at St. Paul's in February, 156f, among long lists of 
unknown men and women, high and low, who had mourn- 
ing given them, among bills for fees to officials, for under- 
takers' charges, for heraldic pageantry and ornamentation, 
for abundant supplies for the sumptuous funeral banquet, 
are put down lists of boys, from the chief London schools, 
St. Paul's, Westminster, and others, to whom two yards of 
cloth were to be given to make their gowns : and at the 
head of the six scholars named from Merchant Taylors' is 
the name of Edmund Spenser. 

He was then, probably, the senior boy of the school, 
and in the. following May he went to Cambridge. The 
Nowells still helped him : we read in their account books 

' See The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell, 1568-1580: 
from the MSS. at Townley Hall. Edited by Rev. A. B. Grosart. 



I.J SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 9 

under April 28, 1569, "to Edraond Spensore, scholler of 
the m'chante tayler scholl, at his gowinge to penbrocke 
hall in chambridge, x^" On the 20th of May, he was ad- 
mitted sizar, or serving clerk at Pembroke Hall; and on 
more than one occasion afterwards, like Hooker and like 
Lancelot Andrewes, also a Merchant Taylors' boy, two or 
three years Spenser's junior, and a member of the same 
college, Spenser had a share in the benefactions, small in 
themselves, bat verv numerous, with which the Nowells, 
after the fine fashion of the time, were accustomed to as- 
sist poor scholars at the Universities. In the visitations 
of Merchant Taylors' School, at which Grindal, Bishop of 
London, was frequently present,' it is not unlikely that his 
interest was attracted, in the appositions or examinations, 
to the promising senior boy of the school. At any rate, 
Spenser, who afterwards celebrated Grindal's qualities as a 
bishop, was admitted to a place, one which befitted a schol- 
ar in humble circumstances, in Grindal's old college. It 
is perhaps worth noticing that all Spenser's early friends, 
Grindal, the Nowells, Dr. Mulcaster, his master, were north 
country men. 

Spenser was sixteen or seventeen when he left school for 
the university, and he entered Cambridge at the time when 
the struggle which was to occupy the reign of Elizabeth 
was just opening. At the end of the year 1569, the first 
distinct blow was struck against the queen and the now 
settlement of religion, by the Rising of the North. In the 
first ten years of Elizabeth's reign, Spenser's school-time 
at Merchant Taylors', the great quarrel had slumbered. 
Events abroad occupied men's minds; the religious wars 
in France, the death of the Duke of Guise (1563), the loss 

' H. B. Wilson, Hist of Merchant Taylors' School^ p. 28. 
B 



10 SPENSER. [chap. 

of Havre, and expulsion of the English garrisons, the close 
of the Council of Trent (1563), the French peace, the ac- 
cession of Pius V. (156|). Nearer home, there was the 
marriage of Mary of Scotland with Henry Darnley (1565), 
and all the tragedy which followed. Kirk of Field (156V), 
Lochleven, Langside, Carlisle, the imprisonment of the pre- 
tender to the English Crown (1568). In England, the 
authority of Elizabeth had establislied itself, and the in- 
ternal organization of the Reformed Churcl^ was going on, 
in an uncertain and tentative way, but steadily. There 
was a struggle between Genevan exiles, who were for go- 
ing too fast, and bishops and politicians, who were for go- 
ing too slow ; between authority and individual judgment, 
between home-born state traditions and foreign revolution- 
ary zeal. But outwardly, at least, England had been peace- 
ful. Now, however, a great change was at hand. In 1566, 
the Dominican Inquisitor, Michael Ghislieri, was elected 
Pope, under the title of Pius V. 

In Pius (1566-72) were embodied the new spirit and 
policy of the Roman Church, as they had been created 
and moulded by the great Jesuit order, and by reforming 
bishops like Ghiberti of Verona, and Carlo Borromeo of 
Milan. Devout and self-denying as a saint, fierce and in- 
fiexible against abuses as a puritan, resolute and uncom- 
promising as a Jacobin idealist or an Asiatic despot, ruth- 
less and inexorable as an executioner, his soul was bent on 
re-establishing, not only by preaching and martyrdom, but 
by the sword find by the stake, the unity of Christendom 
and of its belief. Eastwards and westwards, he beheld 
two formidable foes and two serious dangers ; and he saw 
.'befor^ him the task of his life in the heroic work of crush- 
ing English heresy and beating back Turkish misbelief. 
He :.»roke througli the temporizing caution of his predeces- 



I.] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 11 

sors by the Bull of Deposition against Elizabeth in 15Y0. 
He was the soul of the confederacy which won the day of 
Lepanto against the Ottomans in 1571. And though dead, 
his spirit was paramount in the slaughter of St. Bartholo- 
mew in 1572. 

In the year 1569, while Spenser was passing from school 
to college, his emissaries were already in England, spread- 
ing abroad that Elizabeth was a bastard and an apostate, 
incapable of filling a Christian throne, which belonged by 
right to the captive Mary. The seed they sowed bore 
fruit. In the end of the year, southern England was 
alarmed by the news of the rebellion of the two great 
Earls in the north, Percy of Northumberland and Neville 
of Westmoreland. Durham was sacked, and the mass 
restored by an insurgent host, before which an "' aged gen- 
tleman," Richard Norton with his sons, bore the banner of 
the Five Wounds of Christ.' The rebellion was easily put 
down, and the revenge was stern. To the men who had 
risen at the instigation of the Pope and in the cause of 
Mary, Elizabeth gave, as she had sworn, " such a breakfast 
as never was in the North before." The hangman finish- 
ed the work on those who had escaped the sword. Poetry, 
early and late, has recorded the dreary fate of those brave 
victims of a mistaken cause, in the ballad of the Rising of 
the North, and in the White Doe of Rylstone. It was the 
signal given for the internecine war which was to follow 
between Rome and Elizabeth. x\nd it was the first great 
public event which Spenser would hear of in all men's 
mouths, as he entered on manhood, the prelude and au- 
gury of fierce and dangerous years to come. The nation 
awoke to the certainty — one which so profoundly affects 
sentiment aud character both in a nation and in an in- 
dividual^ — that among the habitual and fixed conditions of 



12 SPENSER. [chap. 

life is that of having a serious and implacable enemy ever 
to reckon with. 

And in this year, apparently in the transition-time be- 
tween school and college, Spenser's literary ventures began. 
The evidence is curious, but it seems to be clear. In 1569, 
a refugee Flemish physician from Antwerp, w^ho had fled 
to England from the " abominations of the Roman Anti- 
christ" and the persecutions of the Duke of Alva, John 
Vander Noodt, published one of those odd miscellanies, 
fashionable at the time, half moral and poetical, half 
fiercely polemical, which he called a " Theatre, wherein be 
represented as well the Miseries and Calamities which fol- 
low the voluptuous Worldlings, as also the great Joys and 
Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy — an argument both 
profitable and delectable to all that sincerely love the word 
of God." This " little treatise " was a mixture of verse 
and prose, setting forth, in general, the vanity of the world, 
and, in particular, predictions of the ruin of Rome and 
Antichrist : and it enforced its lessons by illustrative wood- 
cuts. In this strange jumble are preserved, we can scarce- 
ly doubt, the first compositions which we know of Spen- 
ser's. Among the pieces are some Sonnets of Petrarch, 
and some Visions of the French poet Joachim du Bellay, 
whose poems were published in 1568. In the collection 
itself, these pieces are said by the compiler to have been 
translated by him " out of the Brabants speech," and " out 
of Dutch into English." But in a volume of " poems of 
the w^orld's vanity," and published years afterwards in 1591, 
ascribed to Spenser, and put together, apparently with his 
consent, by his publisher, are found these very pieces from 
Petrarch and Du Bellay. The translations from Petrarch 
are almost literally the same, and are said to have been 
" formerly translated." In the Visions of Du Bellay there 



i.J SPENkSER'S early lite. ■ 18 

is this difference, that the earlier translations are in blank 
verse, and the later ones are rimed as sonnets; but the 
change does not destroy the manifest identity of the two 
translations. So that unless Spenser's publisher, to whom 
the poet had certainly given some of his genuine pieces for 
the volume, is not to be trusted — which, of course, is pos- 
sible, but not probable — or unless — what is in the last 
degree inconceivat)le — Spenser had afterwards been will- 
ina: to take the trouble of turnino- the blank verse of Du 
Bellay's unknown translator into rime, the Dutchman who 
dates his Theatre of Worldlings on the 25th May, 1569, 
must have employed the promising and fluent school-boy, 
to furnish him with an English versified form, of which 
he himself took the credit, for compositions which he pro- 
fesses to have known only in the Brabants or Dutch trans- 
lations. The sonnets from Petrarch are translated with 
much command of language ; there occurs in them, what 
was afterwards a favourite thought of Spenser's : 

— " The Nymphs, 
That sweetly in accord did tune their voice 
To the soft sounding of tJie vxiiers'' fall."^ 

It is scarcely credible that the translator of the sonnets 
could have caught so much as he has done of the spirit 
of Petrarch without having been able to read the Italian 
original ; and if Spenser was the translator, it is a curious 
illustration of the fashionableness of Italian literature in 
the days of Elizabeth, that a school-boy just leaving Mer- 
chant Taylors' should have been so much interested in it. 
Dr. Mulcaster, his master, is said by Warton to have given 
special attention to the teaching of the English language. 

1 Comp. Sheph. Cal. April 1. 36. June 1. 8. F. Q. 6, 10. 1. 



U SPENSER. [chap. 

If these translations were Spenser's, lie must have gone 
to Cambridge with a faculty of verse, which for his time 
may be compared to that with which winners of prize 
poems go to the universities now. But there was this 
difference, that the school-boy versifiers of our days are 
rich with the accumulated experience and practice of the 
most varied and magnificent poetical literature in the 
world ; while Spenser had but one really great English 
model behind him ; and Chaucer, honoured as he was, had 
become in Elizabeth's time, if not obsolete, yet in his dic- 
tion, very far removed from the living language of the 
day. Even Milton, in his boyish compositions, wrote af- 
ter Spenser and Shakespere, with their contemporaries, 
had created modern English poetry. Whatever there was 
in Spenser's early verses of grace and music was of his 
own finding : no one of his own time, except in occasional 
and fitful snatches, like stanzas of Sackville's, had shown 
him the way. Thus equipped, he entered the student 
world, then full of pedantic and ill-applied learning, of the 
disputations of Calvinistic theology, and of the beginnings 
of those highly speculative puritanical controversies, which 
were the echo at the University of the great political 
struggles of the day, and were soon to become so seriously 
practical. The University was represented to the authoi^ 
ities in London as being in a state of dangerous excite- 
ment, troublesome and mutinous. Whitgift, afterwards 
Elizabeth's favourite archbishop. Master, first of Pembroke, 
and then of Trinity, was Vice-Chancellor of the Universi- 
ty ; but, as the guardian of established order, he found it 
diflScult to keep in check the violent and revolutionary 
spirit of the theological schools. Calvin was beginning to 
be set up there as the infallible doctor of Protestant the- 
ology. Cartwright from the Margaret Professor's chair 



1.] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 15 

was teaching the exclusive and divine claims of the Geneva 
platform of discipline, and in defiance of the bishops and 
the government was denouncing the received Church pol- 
ity and ritual as Popish and anti-Christian. Cartwright, 
an extreme and uncompromising man, was deprived in 
1570; but the course which things were taking under the 
influence of Rome and Spain gave force to his lessons and 
warnings, and strengthened his party. In this turmoil of 
opinions, amid these hard and technical debates, these 
fierce conflicts between the highest authorities, and this 
unsparing violence and bitterness of party recriminations, 
Spenser, with ihe tastes and faculties of a poet, and the 
love not only of what was beautiful, but of what was med- 
itative and dreamy, began his university life. 

It was not a favourable atmosphere for the nurture of a 
(Treat poet. But it suited one side of Spenser's mind, as 
it suited that of all but the most independent Englishmen 
\ i the time — Shakespere, Bacon, Ralegh. Little is known 
cf Spenser's Cambridge career. It is probable, from the 
persons with whom he was connected, that he would not 
be indifferent to the debates around him, and that his re- 
ligious prepossessions were then, as afterwards, in favour 
of the conforming puritanism in the Church, as opposed to 
the extreme and thorough-going puritanism of Cartwright. 
Of the conforming puritans, who would have been glad of 
a greater approximation to the Swiss model, but who, 
whatever their private wishes or dislikes, thought it best, 
for good reasons or bad, to submit to the strong deter- 
mination of the government against it, and to accept what 
the government approved and imposed, Grindal, who held 
successively the great sees of London, York, and Canter- 
bury, and Xowell, Dean of St. Paul's, Spenser's benefactor, 
were representative types. Grindal, a waverer like many 



16 SPENSER. [chap. 

others in opinion, had also a noble and manly side to his 
character, in his hatred of practical abuses, and in the 
courageous and obstinate resistance which he could offer 
to power, when his sense of right was outraged. Grin- 
dal, as has been said, was perhaps instrumental in getting 
Spenser into his own old college, Pembroke Hall, with the 
intention, it may be, as was the fashion of bishops of that 
time, of becoming his patron. But certainly after his dis- 
grace in 1577, and when it was not quite safe to praise a 
great man under the displeasure of the Court, Grindal is 
the person whom Spenser first singled out for his warmest 
and heartiest praise. He is introduced under a thin dis- 
guise, " Algrind," in Spenser's earliest work after he left 
Cambridge, the Shepherd's Calendar, as the pattern of the 
true and faithful Christian pastor. And if Pembroke 
Hall retained at all the tone and tendencies of such mas- 
ters as Ridley, Grindal, and Whitgift, the school in which 
Spenser grew up was one of their mitigated pu^itanism. 
But his puritanism was political and national, rather than 
religious. He went heartily with the puritan party in 
their intense hatred of Rome and Roman partisans ; he 
went with them also in their denunciations of the scandals 
and abuses of the ecclesiastical government at home. But 
in temper of mind and intellectual bias he had little in 
common with the puritans. For the stern austerities of 
Calvinism, its fierce and eager scholasticism, its isolation 
from human history, human enjoyment, and all the mani- 
fold play and variety of human character, there could not 
be much sympathy in a man like Spenser, with his easy 
and flexible nature, keenly alive to all beauty, an admirer 
even when he was hot a lover of the alluring pleasures of 
which the world is full, with a perpetual struggle going 
on in him, between his strong instincts of purity and 



i] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. \1 

rio-ht, and his passionate appreciation of every charm and 
grace. He shows no signs of agreement with the internal 
charact 'Miotics of the puritans, their distinguishing theolo- 
gy, their peculiarities of thought and habits, their protests, 
right or v^ 'ong, against the fashions and amusements of the 
world, il not a man of pleasure, he yet threw himself 
without scruple into the tastes, the language, the pursuits, 
of the gay and gallant society in which they saw so much 
evil : and from their narrow view of life, and the contempt, 
dislike, and fear with which they regarded the whole field 
of human interest, he certainly was parted by the widest 
gulf. Indeed, he had not the sternness and concentration 
of purpose, which made Milton the great puritan poet. 

Spenser took his Master's degree in 1576, and then left 
Cambridge. He gained no Fellowship, and there is noth- 
ing to show how he employed himself. His classical learn- 
ing, whether acquired there or elsewhere, was copious, but 
curiously inaccurate ; and the only specimen remaining of 
his Latin composition in verse is contemptible in its me- 
diaeval clumsiness. We know nothing of his Cambridge 
life except the friendships which he formed there. An 
intimacy began at Cambridge of the closest and most af- 
fectionate kind, which lasted long into after-life, between 
him and two men of his college, one older in standing than 
himself, the other younger ; Gabriel Harvey, first a fellovw 
of Pembroke, and then a student or teacher of civil law at 
Trinity Hall, and Edward Kirke, like Spenser, a sizar at 
Pembroke, recently identified with the E. K. who was the 
editor and commentator of Spenser's earliest work, the 
anonymous Shepherd's Calendar. Of the younger friend 
this is the most that is known. That he was deeply in 
Spenser's confidence as a literary coadjutor, and possibly 
in other ways, is shown in the work which he did. But 
2 



18 SPENSER. [chap. 

Gabriel Harvey was a man who had influence on Spenser's 
ideas and purposes, and on the direction of his efforts. He 
was a classical scholar of much distinction in his day, well 
read in the Italian authors then so fashionable, and regard- 
ed as a high authority on questions of criticism and taste. 
Except to students of Elizabethan literary history, he has 
become an utterly obscure personage ; and he has not usu- 
ally been spoken of with much respect. He had the mis- 
fortune, later in life, to plunge violently into the scurrilous 
quarrels of the day, and as he was matched with wittier 
and more popular antagonists, he lias come down to us as 
a foolish pretender, or at least as a dull and stupid scholar 
who knew little of the real value of the books he was al- 
ways ready to quote, like the pedant of the comedies, or 
Shakespere's schoolmaster Holofernes. Further, he was one 
who, with his classical learning, had little belief in the re- 
sources of his mother-tongue, and he was one of the ear- 
liest and most confident supporters of a plan then fash- 
ionable, for reforming English verse, by casting away its 
natural habits and rhythms, and imposing on it the hiws 
of the classical metres. In this he was not singular. The 
professed treatises of this time on poetiy, of which there 
were sevei'al, assume the same theory, as the mode of " re- 
forming" and duly elevating English verse. It was eager- 
ly accepted by Tliilip Sidney and his Areopagus of wits at 
court, who busied themselves in devising rules of their own 
— improvements as they thought on those of thp universi- 
ty men — for English hexameters and sapphics, or, as they 
called it, artificial versifying. They regarded the compar- 
ative value of the native English rhythms and the classical 
metres, much as our ancestors of Addison's day regarded 
the comparison between Gothic and Palladian architecture. 
One, even if it sometimes had a certain romantic interest, 



I.J SPENSER\S EARLY LIFE. 10 

was rude and coarse ; the other was the perfection of po- 
lite art and good taste. Certainly in what remains of Ga- 
briel Harvey's writing-, there is mucli that seems to us vain 
and* ridiculous enough ; and it has been naturally surmised 
that he must have been a dangerous friend and counsellor 
to Spenser. But probably we are hard upon him. His 
writings, ufter all, are not much more affected and absurd 
in their outward fashion than most of the literary compo- 
sition of the time ; his verses are no worse than those of 
most of his neighbours ; he was not above, but he was not 
below, the false taste and clumsiness of his age; and the 
rage for " artificial versifying" was for the moment in the 
air. And it must be said, that though his enthusiasm for 
English hexameters is of a piece witli the puritan use of 
Scripture texts in divinity and morals, yet there is no want 
of hard-headed shrewdness in his remarks; indeed, in his 
rules for the adaptation of English words and accents to 
classical metres, he shows clearness and good sense in ap- 
prehending the conditions of the problem, while Sidney 
and Spenser still appear confused and uncertain. But in 
spite of his pedantry, and though lie had not, as we shall 
see, the eye to discern at first the genius of the Faerie 
Queene, he has to us the interest of having been Spenser's 
first, and as far as we can see, to the last, dearest fiiend. 
By both, of his yoimger fellow-students at Cambridge he 
was looked up to with the deepest reverence and the most 
confiding affection. Their language is extravagant, but 
there is no reason to think that it was not genuine. E. 
Kirke, the editor of Spenser's first venture, the Shepherd's 
Calendar, (tovavL\^x\di^ the "new poet" to his patronage, 
and to the protection of his " mighty rhetoric," and ex- 
horts Harvey himself to seize the poetical " garland which 
to him alone is due." Spenser speaks in the same terms : 



20 SPENSER. [rHAP. 

*' veruntamen te sequor solum ; nunquam vero assequary 
Portions of the early correspondence between Harvey and 
Spenser have been preserved to us, possibly by Gabriel 
Harvey's self - satisfaction in regard to his own composi- 
tions. But with the pedagogue's jocoseness, and a play- 
fulness which is like that of an elephant, it shows on both 
sides easy frankness, sincerity, and warmth, and hot a lit- 
tle of the early character of the younger man. In Spen- 
ser's earliest poetry, his pastorals, Harvey appears among 
the imaginary rustics, as the poet's " special and most fa- 
miliar friend," under the name of Hobbinol — 

" Good Hobbinol, that was so true." 

To him Spenser addresses his confidences, under the 
name of Colin Clout, a name borrowed from Skelton, a 
satirical poet of Henry YHL's time, which Spenser kept 
throughout his poetical career. Harvey reappears in one 
of Spenser's latest writings, a return to the early pastoral, 
Colin Clout's come home again, a picture drawn in distant 
Ireland, of the brilliant but disappointing court of Eliza- 
beth, And from Ireland, in 1586, was addressed to Har- 
vey by his " devoted friend during life," the following line 
sonnet, which, whatever may have been the merit of Har- 
vey's criticisms and his literary quarrels with Greene and 
Nash, shoAvs at least Spenser's unabated honour for him. 

" To THE Right Worshipful, my singular good Frikxd, M. Gabriel 
Harvey, Doctor of the Laws. 

" Harvey, the happy above happiest men 

I read ; that, sitting like a looker on 

Of this world's stage, dost note with critic pen 

The sharp dislikes of each condition ; ' 
• And, as one careless of suspicion, 

Ne f awnest for the favour of the great ; 



I.] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 21 

Ne fearest foolish reprehension 
Of faulty men, which danger to thee threat ; 
But freely dost, of what thee list, entreat, 
Like a great lord of peerless liberty ; 
Lifting the good up to high honour's seat, 
And the evil damning ever more to die ; 
For life and death is in thy doomful writing ; 
So thy renown lives ever by enditing. 
"Dublin, this xviii. of July, 1586. Your devoted friend, during life, 

"Edmund Spenser." 

Between Cambridge and Spenser's appearance in Lon- 
don, there is a short but obscure interval. AVhat is cer- 
tain is, that he spent part of it in the North of England ; 
that he was busy with various poetical works, one of which 
was soon to make him known as a new star in the poetical 
heaven ; and lastly, that in the effect on him of a deep but 
unrequited passion, he then received what seems to have 
been a strong and determining influence on his character 
and life. It seems likely that his sojourn in the north, 
which perhaps first introduced the London-bred scholar, 
the " Southern Shepherd's Boy," to the novel and rougher 
country life of distant Lancashire, also gave form and lo- 
cal character to his first considerable work. But we do 
not know for certain where his abode was in the north ; of 
his literary activity, which must have been considerable, 
we only partially know the fruit ; and of the lady whom 
he made so famous, that her name became a consecrated 
word in the poetry of the time, of Rosalind, the " Widow's 
Daughter of the Glen," whose refusal of his suit, and pref- 
erence for another, he lamented so bitterly, yet would al- 
low no one else to blame, we know absolutely nothing. 
She would not be his wife ; but apparently, he never 
ceased to love her through all the chances and tempta- 
tions, and possibly errors of his life, even apparently in 



22 SPENSER. [( hap. 

the midst of his passionate admiration of the lady whom, 
long afterwards, lie did marry. To her kindred and con- 
dition, various clues have been suG^o-ested, only to provoke 
and disappoint us. Whatever her ec>ndition, she was able 
to measure Sj)enser's powers : Gabriel Harvey has pre- 
served one of her compliments — " Gentle Mistress Rosa- 
lind once reported him to have all the intellityences at 
commandment; and at another, christened him her Siffy- 
ior Per/aso.''^ But the unknown Rosalind had g-ivcn an 
impulse to the young poet's powers, and a colour to his 
thoughts, and had enrolled Spenser in that band and order 
of poets — with one exception, not the greatest order — to 
whom the wonderful passion of love, in its heights and 
its depths, is the element on which their imagination 
works, and out of wJiidi it moulds its most beautiful and 
characteristic creations. 

J>ut in October, 1570, he emerges from obscuritv. If 
wc may trust the corrcspoudence between Gabriel Harvey 
and Spenser, which was published at the time, Spenser 
was then in London.' It was the time of the crisis of the 
Alencon courtship, while the queen was playing fa^t and 
loose with her Valois lover, whom she playfully called her 
frog ; when all about her, Burghley, Leicester, Sidney, and 
Walsingham, were dismayed, both at the plan itself, and at 
her vacillations; and just when the Puritan jiamphleteer, 
who had given expression to the popular disgust at a 
Freneli marriage, especially at a connexion with the family 
which had on its hands the blood of St. Bartholomew, was 
sentenced to lose his right hand as a seditious libeller. 

' I'ublislicd in .luiie, 1580. Reprinted incompletely in Hasle- 
wood, Ancioit C'rificaf Esuai/s (1815), ii. 255. Extracts given in edi- 
tions of Spenser by Hughes, Todd, and Morris. The letters are of 
April, 1579, and October, 1580. 



i] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 23 

Spjenser had become acqiminted witli Philip Sidney, and 
Sidney's literary and conrtly friends. He had been re 
ceived into the household of Sidney's uncle, Lord Leices 
ter, and dates one of his letters from Leicester House. 
Among- his employments he had \vritten " Stemmata 
Dudleianay He is doubting wliether or not to publish, 
"to utter," some of liis poetical compositions: he is 
doubting, and asks Harvey's advice, whether or not to ded- 
icate them to His Excellent Lordship, "lest by our much 
cloying* their noble ears he should gather contempt of my- 
self, or else seem rather for gain and commodity to do it, 
and some sweetness that I have already tasted." Yet, he 
thinks, that when occasion is so fairly offered of estima- 
tion and preferment, it may be well to use it : " while the 
iron is hot, it is good striking ; and minds of nobles vary, 
as their estates." And he was on the eve of starting 
across the sea to be employed in Leicester's service, on 
some permanent mission in France, perhaps in connexion 
with the Alenc;on intrigues. He was thus launched into 
what was looked upon as the road to ])referment ; in his 
case, as it turned out, a very subordinjitc form of public 
employment, which was to continue almost for his life- 
time. Sidney had recognized his unusual power, if not 
yet his genius. He brt)uglit liiiu forward ; pciliaps he ac- 
cepted him as a friend. Tiadition makes him Sidney's 
companion at Penshurst; in his early poems, Kent is the 
county with which he seems most familiar. l>ut Sid- 
ney certainly made him known to the queen ; he proba- 
bly recommended him as a promising servant to Leices- 
ter: and he impressed his own noble and beautiful charac- 
ter deeply on Spenser's mind. Spenser saw and learned 
in him what was then the highest type of the finished 
gentleman. He led Spenser astray. Sidney was not 



24 SPENSER. [chap. 

without his full share of that affectation, which was then 
thought refinement. Like Gabriel Harvey, he induced 
Spenser to waste his time on the artificial versifying which 
was in vogue. But such faults and mistakes of fashion, 
and in one shape or another they are inevitable in all 
ages, were as nothing, compared to the influence on a 
highly receptive nature, of a character so elevated and 
pure, so genial, so brave and true. It was not in vain that 
Spenser was thus brought so near to his " Astrophel." 

These letters tell us all that we know of Spenser's life 
at this time. During these anxious eighteen months, and 
connected with persons like Sidney and Leicester, Spenser 
only writes to Harvey on literary subjects. He is dis- 
creet, and will not indulge Harvey's " desire to hear of my 
late being with her Majesty." According to a literary 
fashion of the time, he writes and is addressed as M. Im- 
merito, and the great business which occupies him and fills 
the letters is the scheme devised in Sidney's Areopagus for 
the "general surceasing and silence of bald Rymers, and 
also of the very best of them too ; and for prescribing cer- 
tain laws and rules of quantities of English syllables for 
English verse." Spenser " is more in love with his Eng- 
lish versifying than with ryming" — "which," he says to 
Harvey, " I should have done long since, if I would then 
have followed your counsel." Harvey, of course, is de- 
lighted ; he thanks the good angel which puts it into the 
heads of Sidney and Edward Dyer, " the two very dia- 
monds of her Majesty's court," " our very Castor and Pol- 
lux," to " help forward our new famous enterprise for the 
exchanging of barbarous rymes for artificial verses;" and 
the whole subject is discussed at great length between the 
two friends ; " Mr. Drant's" rules are compared with those 
of "Mr. Sidney," revised by "Mr. Immerito;" and exam- 



,.] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 25 

pies, highly illustrative of the character of the "famous 
enterprise," are copiously given. In one of Harvey's let- 
ters we have a curious account of changes of fashion in 
studies and ideas at Cambridge. They seem to have 
changed since Spenser's time. 

" I beseech you all this while, what news at Cambridge ? Tully 
and Demosthenes nothing so much studied as they were wont : Livy 
and Sallust perhaps more, rather than less : Ludan never so much : 
Aristotle much named but little read: Xenophon an(i Plato reckoned 
amongst discoursers, and conceited superficial fellows ; much verbal 
aiMl sophistical jangling; little subtle and effectual disputing. Mach- 
iavel a great man ; Castillo of no small repute ; Petrarch and Boccace 
in every man's mouth : Galateo and Guazzo never so happy : but 
some acquainted with Unim Aretiiw : the F^-ench and Italian highly 
regarded : the Latin arid Creek but lightly. The Queen Mother at 
the beginning or end of every conference, all inquisitive after news : 
Dew books, new fashions, new laws^ new officers, and some after new 
elements, son»e after new heavens and hells too. Turkish affairs fa- 
miliarly known : castles built in the air . much ado, and little help : 
\n no age so little so much made of, every one highly in his own 
/avour. Something made of nothing, in spight of Nature: numbers 
made of cyphers, in spight of Art. Oxen and asses, notwithstanding 
the absurdity it seemed to Plaudits, drawing in the same yoke : the 
Gospel taught, not learnt ; Charity cold ; nothing good but by impu- 
tation ; the Ceremonial Law in word abrogated, the Judicial in effect 
disannull'd, the Moral abandon'd ; the Light, the Light in every man's 
lips, but mark their eyes, and you will say they are rather like owls 
than eagles. As of old books, so of ancient virtue, honesty, fidelity, 
equity, new abridgments ; every day spawns new opinions : heresy 
in divinity, in philosophy, in humanity, in manners, grounded upon 
hearsay ; doctors contemn'd ; the devil not so hated as the pope ; 
many invectives, but no amendment. No more ado about caps and 
surplices; Mr. Cartwright quite forgotten. 

******* 

David, Ulysses, and Solon feign'd themselves fools and madmen ; 
our fools and madmen feign themselves Davids, Ulysseses, and Soloiis. 
C 2* 



SPENSER. [cHAr. 

It is pity fair weather should do any hurt ; but I know Avhat peace 
and quietness hath done with some melancholy pickstraws." 

The letters preserve a good many touches of character 
which are interesting. This, for instance, which shows 
Spenser's feeling about Sidney. " New books," writes 
Spenser, " I hear of none, but only of one, that writing a 
certain book called The School of Abuse [Stephen Gos- 
son's Invective against 2>oets, pipers, players, c&c], and ded- 
icating to M. Sidney, was for his labour scorned : if at 
least it be in the goodness of that nature to scorn.'''' As re- 
gards Spenser himself, it is clear from the letters that Har- 
vey was not without uneasiness lest his friendj from his 
gay and pleasure-loving nature, and the temptations round 
him, should be carried away into the vices of an age 
which, though very brilliant and high-tempered, was also 
a very dissolute one. He couches his counsels mainly in 
Latin ; but they point to real danger ; and he adds in 
English — "Credit me, I will never lin [=:cease] baiting at 
you, till I have rid you quite of this yonkerly and woman- 
ly humour." But in the second pair of letters of April, 
1580, a lady appears. Whether Spenser was her husband 
or her lover, we know not ; but she is his " sweetheart." 
The two friends write of her in Latin. Spenser sends in 
Latin the saucy messages of his sweetheart, " meum corcu- 
lum," to Harvey ; Harvey, with academic gallantry, sends 
her in Latin as many thanks for her charming letter as 
she has hairs, " half golden, half silver, half jewelled, in 
her little head ;" — she is a second little Rosalind — " altera 
Rosalindula," whom he salutes as " Domina Immerito, mea 
bellissima Colina Clouta." But whether wife or mistress, 
we hear of her no more. Further, the letters contain no- 
tices of various early works of Spenser. The " new " 
Shepherd's Calendar, of which more will be said, had just 



I.] SPENSER'S EARLY LIFE. 27 

been published. And in this correspondence of April, 
1580, we have the first mention of the Faerie Queene. 
The, compositions here mentioned have been either lost, 
or worked into his later poetry ; his Dreams, Epithalamion 
Thamesis, apparently in the " reformed verse," his Dying 
Pelican, his Slumber, his S lemmata Dudleiana, his Come- 
dies. They show at least the activity and eagerness of 
the writer in his absorbing pursuit. But he was still in 
bondage to the belief that English poetry ought to try to 
})ut on a classical dress. It is strange that the man who 
had written some of the poetry in the Shepherd''s Calen- 
dar should have found either satisfaction or promise in 
the following attempt at Trimeter Iambics. 

" And nowe requite I you with the like, not with the verve beste, 
but with the verye shortest,.namely, with a few lambickes : I dare 
warrant they be precisely perfect for the feete (as you can easily 
judge), and varie not one inch from the Rule. I will imparte yours 
to Maister Sidnei/ and Maister Di/er at my nexte going to the Courte. 
I praye you, keepe mine close to yourself, or your verie entire friends, 
Maister Preston, Maister Stilly and the reste. 

" lainfncum Trhnetrmn. 
" Unhappie Verse, the witnesse of my unhappie state. 
Make thy selfe fluttring wings of thy fast flying 
Thought, and fly forth unto my Love wheresoever she be : 

" Whether lying reastlesse in heavy bedde, or else 

Sitting so cheerlesse at the cheerfull boorde, or else 
Playing alone carelesse on hir heavenlie Virginals. 

" If in Bed, tell hir, that my eyes can take no reste : 

If at Boorde, tell hir that ray mouth can eate no meate: 
If at hir Virginals, tell hir I can heare no mirth. 

" Asked why ? say : Waking Love suffereth no sleepe : 

Say, that raging Love dothe appall the weake stomacke : 
Say, that lamenting Love marreth the Musicall. 



28 SPENSER. ' [chap. I. 

" Tell hir, that hir pleasures were wonte to lull me asleepe : 
Tell hir, that hir beautie was wonte to f eede mine eyes : 
Tell hir, that hir sweete Tongue was wonte to make me mirth. 

" Nowe doe I nightly waste, wanting my kindely reste : 
Nowe doe I dayly starve, wanting ray lively f oode : 
Nowe doe I alwayes dye, wanting thy timely mirth. 

*And if I waste, who will bewaile my heavy ehaunce? 
And if I starve, who will record my cursed end ? 
And if I dye, who will saye : this was Immeritoi" 



CHAPTER II. 

THrf NEW POET THE SHEPHERd's CALENDAR. 

[1579.] 

It is clear that when Spenser appeared in London, he 
had found out his powers and vocation as a poet. He 
came from Cambridge, fully conscious of the powerful 
attraction of the imaginative faculties, conscious of an ex- 
traordinary command over the resources of language, and 
with a singular gift of sensitiveness to the grace and maj- 
/«sty and suggestiveness of sound and rhythm, such as 
makes a musician. x\nd whether he knew it or not, his 
mind was in reality made up, as to what his English poe- 
try was to be. In spite of opinions and fashions round 
him, in spite of university pedantry and the affectations 
of the court, in spite of Harvey's classical enthusiasm and 
Sidney's Areopagus, and in spite of half-fancying himself 
converted to their views, his own powers and impulses 
showed him the truth, and made him understand better 
than his theories what a poet could and ought to do with 
English speech in its free play and genuine melodies. 
When we first come upon him, we find that, at the age of 
twenty-seven, he had not only realized an idea of English 
poetry far in advance of anything which his age had yet 
conceived or seen ; but that, besides what he had executed 
or planned, he had alrea<iy in his mind the outlines of 



30 SPEXSER. [chap. 

thb Faerie Queene^ and, in some form or other, though j)er- 
haps not yet as we have it, had written some portion of it. 
In attempting to revive for his own age Chaucer's sus- 
pended art, Spenser had the tendencies of the time with 
him. The age was looking out for some one to do for 
England what had been grandly done for Italy. The time, 
in truth, was full of poetry. The nation was just in that 
condition which is most favourable to an outburst of poet- 
ical life or art. It was highly excited ; but it was also in 
a state of comparative peace and freedom from external 
disturbance. "An over -faint quietness," writes Sidney 
in 1581, lamenting that there were so few good poets, 
"should seem to strew the house for poets." After the 
first ten years of Elizabeth's reign, and the establishment 
of her authority, the country had begun to breathe freely, 
and fall into natural and regular ways. During the first 
half of the century, it had had before it the most aston- 
ishing changes which the world had seen for centuries. 
These changes seemed definitely to have run their course ; 
with the convulsions which accompanied them, their up- 
rootings and terrors, they were gone ; and the world had 
become accustomed to their results. The nation still had 
before it great events, great issues, great perils, great and 
indefinite prospects of adventure and achievement. The 
old quarrels and animosities of Europe had altered in 
character ; from being wars between princes, and disputes 
of personal ambition, they had attracted into them all that 
interests and divides mankind, from high to low. Their 
animating principle was a high and a sacred cause : they 
had become wars of liberty, and wars of religion. The 
world had settled down to the fixed antipathies and steady 
rivalries , of centuries to come. But the mere shock of 
transition was over. Yet the remembrance of the great 



II.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERDVS CALENDAR. 31 

break-up was still fresh. For fifty 3'ears the English peo- 
ple had had before its eyes the great vicissitudes which 
make tragedy. They had seen the most unforeseen and 
most unexpected revolutions in what had for ages been 
held certain and immovable ; the overthrow of the strong- 
est institutions, and most venerable authorities; the vio- 
lent shifting of feelings from faith to passionate rejection, 
from reverence to scorn and a hate which could not be 
satisfied. They had seen the strangest turns of fortune, 
the most wonderful elevations to power, the most terrible 
visitations of disgrace. They had seen the mightiest 
ruined, the brightest and most admired brought down 
to shame and death, men struck down with all the forms 
of ]rw, whom the age honoured as its noblest ornaments. 
They had seen the flames of martyr or heretic, heads which 
had worn a crown laid one after another on the block, 
controversies, not merely between rivals for powder, but be- 
tween the deepest principles and the most rooted creeds, 
settled on the scaffold. Such a time of surprise — of hope 
and anxiety, of horror and anguish to-day, of relief and 
exultation to-morrow — had hardly been to England as the 
first half of the sixteenth century. All that could stir 
men's souls, all that could inflame their hearts, or that 
could wring them, had happened. 

And yet, compared with previous centuries, and with 
what was going on abroad, the time now was a time of 
peace, and men lived securely. Wealth was increasing. 
The Wars of the Roses had left the crown powerful to 
enforce order, and protect industry and trade. The na- 
tion was beginning to grow rich. When the day's work 
was done, men's leisure was not disturbed by the events 
of neighbouring war. They had time to open their imag- 
inations to the great spectacle which had been unrolled 



82 SPENSER. [chap. 

before theiu, to reflect upon it, to put into shape their 
thoughts about it. The intellectual movement of the 
time had reached England, and its strong impulse to men- 
tal efforts in new and untried directions was acting pow- 
erfully upon Englishmen. But though there was order 
and present peace at home, there was much to keep men's 
minds on the stretch. There was quite enough danger 
and uncertainty to wind up their feelings to a high pitch. 
But danger was not so pressing as to prevent them from 
giving full place to the impressions of the strange and 
eventful scene round them, with its grandeur, its sadness, 
its promises. In such a state of things there is every- 
thing to tempt poetry. There are its materials and its 
stimulus, and there is the leisure to use its materials. 

-But the poet had not yet been found; and everythinif 
connected with poetry was in the disorder of ignoranci? 
and uncertainty. Between the counsels of a pedantic, 
scholarship, and the rude anid hesitating, but true.instincti» 
of the natural English ear, every one was at sea. Yet iv, 
«eemed as if every one was trying his hand at verse. Pop- 
ular writing took that shape. The curious and unique 
record of literature preserved in the registers of the Sta- 
tioners' Company, shows that the greater proportion of 
what was published, or at least entered for publication, 
was in the shape of ballads. The ballad vied with the 
sermon in doing what the modern newspaper does, in sat- 
isfying the public craving for information, amusement, 
or guidance. It related the last great novelty, the last 
great battle or crime, a storm or monstrous birth. It told 
some pathetic or burlesque story, or it moralized on the 
humours or follies of classes and professions, of young and 
old, of men and of women. It sang the lover's hopes or 
sorrows, or the adventures of some hero of history or ro- 



II.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 



33 



iiiancc. It might be a fable, a satire, a libel, a squib, a sa- 
cred song or paraphrase, a homily. But about all that it 
treated it sought to throw more or less the colour of im- 
agination. It appealed to the reader's feelings, or sympa- 
thy, or passion. It attempted to raise its subject above 
the level of mere matter of fact. It sought for choice and 
expressive words ; it called in the help of measure and 
rhythm. It aimed at a rude form of art. Presently the 
critical faculty came into play. Scholars, acquainted with 
classical models and classical rules, began to exercise their 
judgment on their own poetiy, to construct theories, to re- 
view the performances before them, to suggest plans for the 
improvement of the poetic art. Their essays are curious^ 
as the beginnings of that great critical literature, which m 
England, in spite of much infelicity, has only been second 
to the poetry which it judged. But in themselves they are 
crude, meagre, and helpless ; interesting mainly as show- 
ing how much craving there was for poetry, and how little 
good poetry to satisfy it, and what inconceivable doggerel 
could be recommended by reasonable men, as fit to be ad- 
mired and imitated. There is fire and eloquence in Philip 
Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie (1581) ; but his ideas about 
poetry were floating, loose, and ill-defined, and he had not 
much to point to as of first-rate excellence in recent 
writers. Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), 
and the more elaborate work ascribed to George Putten- 
ham (1589), works of tame and artificial learning without 
Sidney's fire, reveal equally the poverty, as a whole, of 
what had been as yet produced in England as poetry, in 
spite of the wide-spread passion for poetry. The speci- 
mens which they quote and praise are mostly grotesque to 
the last degree. Webbe improves some gracefully flowing 
lines of Spenser's into the most portentous Sapphics ; and 



34 SPENSER. [chap. 

Puttenham squeezes compositions into the shapes of tri- 
angles, eggs, and pilasters. Gabriel Harvey is accused by 
his tormentor, Nash, of doing the same, " of having writ 
verse in all kinds, as in form of a pair of gloves, a dozen 
of points, a pair of spectacles, a two-hand sword, a poyna- 
do, a colossus, a pyramid, a painter's easel, a market cross, 
a trumpet, an anchor, a pair of pot-hooks." Puttenham's 
Art of Poetry, with its books, one on Proportion, the other 
on Ornament, might be compared to an Art of War, of 
which one book treated of barrack drill, and the other of 
busbies, sabretasches, and different forms of epaulettes and 
feathers. These writers do not want good sense or the 
power to make a good remark. But the stuff and mate- 
rial for good criticism, the strong and deep poetry, which 
makes such criticisms as theirs seem so absurd, had not 
yet appeared. 

A change was at hand ; and the suddenness of it is one 
of the most astonishing things in literary history. The 
ten years from 1580 to 1590 present a set of critical es- 
says, giving a picture of English poetry of which, though 
there are gleams of a better hope, and praise is specially 
bestowed on a " new poet," the general character is feeble- 
ness, fantastic absurdity, affectation, and bad taste. Force, 
and passion, and simple truth, and powerful thoughts of 
the world and man, are rare ; and poetical reformers ap- 
pear maundering about miserable attempts at English hex- 
ameters and sapphics. What was to be looked for from 
all that? Who could suppose what was preparing under 
it all? But the dawn was come. The next ten years, 
from 1590 to 1600, not only saw the Faerie Queene^ but 
they were the years of the birth of the English Drama. 
Compare the idea which we get of English poetry from 
Philip Sidney's Defense in 1581, and Puttenham's treatise 



II.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 85 

in 1589, I do not say with Shakespere, but with Lamb's 
selections from the Dramatic Poets, many of them un- 
known names to the majority of modern readers ; and we 
see at once what a bound English poetry has made ; we 
see that a new spring-time of power and purpose in poet- 
ical thought has opened ; new and original forms have 
sprung to life of poetical grandeur, seriousness, and mag- 
nificence. From the poor and rude play-houses, with their 
troops of actors, most of them profligate and disreputable, 
their coarse excitements, their buffoonery, license, and taste 
for the monstrous and horrible — denounced not without 
reason as corrupters of public morals, preached against at 
Paul's Cross, expelled the city by the Corporation, classed 
by the law with rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, 
and patronized by the great and unscrupulous nobles in 
defiance of it — there burst forth suddenly a new poetry, 
which with its reality, depth, sweetness and nobleness took 
the world captive. The poetical ideas and aspirations of 
the Englishmen of the time had found at last adequate in- 
terpreters, and their own national and unrivalled expression. 
And in this great movement Spenser was the harbin- 
ger and announcing sign. But he was only the harbinger. 
What he did was to reveal to English cars as it never had 
been revealed before, at least, since the days of Chaucer, 
the sweet music, the refined grace, the inexhaustible ver- 
satility of the English tongue. But his own efforts w^ere 
in a different direction from that profound and insatiable 
seeking after the real, in thought and character, in repre- 
sentation and expression, which made Shakespere so great, 
and his brethren great in proportion as they approached 
him. Spenser's genius continued to the end under the in- 
fluences which were so powerful when it first unfolded it- 
self. To the last it allied itself, in form at least, with the 



8<'. SPENSER. [niAP. 

artificial. To the last it moved in a world wliicli was not 
real, which never had existed, which, any how, was only a 
world of memory and sentiment. lie never threw him- 
self frankly on human life as it is ; he always viewed it 
through a veil of mist which greatly altered its true col- 
ours, and often distorted its proportions. And thus -while 
more than any one he prepared the instruments and the 
path for the great triumph, he himself missed the true field 
for the highest exercise of poetic power ; he missed the 
highest honours of that in which he led the way. 

Yet, curiously enough, it seems as if, early in his career, 
he w^as affected by the strong stream which drew Shake- 
spere. Among the compositions of his first period, be- 
sides The Shephercfs Calendar, are Nine Comedies — clear- 
ly real plays, which his friend Gabriel Harvey praised with 
enthusiasm. As early as 1579 Spenser had laid before 
Gabriel Harvey, for his judgment and advice, a portion of 
the Faerie Queene in some shape or another, and these 
nine comedies. He was standing at the parting of the 
ways. The allegory, with all its tempting associations and 
machinery, with its ingenuities and pictures, and bound- 
less license to vagueness and to fancy, was on one side ; 
and on the other, the drama, with its prima facie and su- 
perficially prosaic aspects, and its kinship to what was cus- 
tomary and commonplace and unromantic in human life. 
Of the nine comedies composed on the model of those of 
Ariosto and Machiavelli and other Italians, every trace has 
perished. But this was Gabriel Harvey's opinion of the 
respective value of the two specimens of work submitted 
to him, and this was his counsel to their author. In April, 
1580, he thus writes to Spenser: 

"In good faith I had once again nigh forgotten your Faerie 
Qu^ne : liowbeit,by good chance, I have now sent her home at tlie 



ii] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 37 

last neither in better or worse case than I found her. And must you 
of necessity have my judgment of her indeed ? To be plain, I am 
void of all judgment, if your Nine Comedies, whereunto in imitation 
of Herodotus, you give the names of the Nine Muses (and in one 
man's fancy not unworthily), come not nearer Ariosto's comedies, 
either for the fineness of plausible elocution, or the rareness of poet- 
ical invention, than that Elvish Queen doth to his Orlando Furioso^ 
which notwithstanding you will needs seem to emulate and hope to 
overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in one of your last letters. 

" Besides that you know, it hath been the usual practice of the most 
exquisite and odd wits in all nations, and specially in Italy, rather to 
show, and advance themselves that way than any other : as, namely, 
those three notorious discoursing heads Bibiena, Machiavel, and Are- 
tino did (to let Bembo and Ariosto pass) with the great admiration 
and wonderment of the whole country : being indeed reputed match- 
able in all points, both for conceit of wit and eloquent deciphering of 
matters, either with Aristophanes and Menander in Greek, or with 
Plautus and Terence in Latin, or with any other in any other tongue. 
But I will not stand greatly with you in your own matters. If so be 
the Faerie Queene be fairer in your eye than the Nine Muses, and 
Hobgoblin run away with the garland from Apollo: mark what I say, 
and yet I will not say that I thought, but ther^ is an end for this 
once, and fare you well, till God or some good angel put you in a bet- 
ter mind." 

It is plain on which side Spenser's own judgment in- 
clined. Pie had probably written the comedies, as he had 
written English hexameters, out of deference to others, or 
to try his hand. But the current of his own secret 
thoughts, those thoughts, with their ideals and aims, which 
tell a man what he is made for, and where his power lies, 
set another way. The Faerie Queene was " fairer in his 
eye than the Nine Muses, and Hobgoblin did run away 
with the garland from Apollo." What Gabriel Harvey 
prayed for as the " better mind " did not come. And we 
cannot repine at a decision which gave us, in the shape 
which it took at last, the allegory of the Faerie Queene. 



S8 SPENSER. [chap. 

But the Faerie Queene, though ah'eady planned and per- 
haps begun, belongs to the last ten years of the century, 
to the season of fulfilment, not of proniise, to the blossom- 
ing, not to the opening bud. The new hopes for poetry 
which Spenser brought were given in a work, which the 
Faerie Queene has eclipsed and almost obscured, as the 
sun puts out the morning star. Yet that which marked a 
turning-point in the history of our poetry, was the book 
which came out, timidly and anonymously, in the end of 
1579, or the beginning of 1580, under the borrowed title 
of the Shepherd's Calendar^ a name familiar in those days 
as that of an early medley of astrology and homely re- 
ceipts from time to time reprinted, which was the Moore's 
or Zadkiel's almanac of the time. It was not published 
ostensibly by Spenser himself, though it is inscribed to 
Philip Sidney in a copy of verses signed with Spenser's 
masking name of Immerito. The avowed responsibility 
for it might have been inconvenient for a young man 
pushing his fortune among the cross currents of Eliza- 
beth's court. But it was given to the world by a friend 
of the author's, signing himself E. K., now identified with 
Spenser's fellow-student at Pembroke, Edward Kirke, who 
dedicates it in a long, critical epistle of some interest to 
the author's friend, Gabriel Harvey, and, after the fashion 
of some of the Italian books of poetry, accompanies it with 
a gloss, explaining words, and to a certain extent, allusions. 
Two things are remarkable in Kirke's epistle. One is the 
confidence with which he announces the yet unrecognized 
excellence of "this one new poet," whom he is not afraid 
to put side by side with " that good old poet," Chaucer, 
the " loadstar of our language." The other point is the 
absolute reliance which he places on the powers of the 
English language, handled by one who has discerned itft 



II.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 89 

genius, and is not a&'aid to use its wealth. "In my opin- 
ion, it is one praise of many that are due to this poet, that 
he hath laboured to restore, as to their rightful heritage, 
such good and natural English words as have been long 
time out of use, or almost clean disherited, which is the 
only cause, that our mother-tongue, which truly of itself is 
both full enough for prose, and stately enough for verse, 
hath long time been counted most bai-e and barren of 
both." The friends, Kirke and Harvey, were not wrong 
in their estimate of the importance of Spenser's work. 
The " new poet," as he came to be customarily called, had 
really made one of those distinct steps in his art, which 
answer to discoveries and inventions in other spheres of 
human interest — steps which make all behind them seem 
obsolete and mistaken. There was much in the new po- 
etry which was immature and imperfect, not a little that 
was fantastic and affected. But it was the first adequate 
effort of reviving English poetry. 

The Shephercfs Calendar consists of twelve composi- 
tions, with no other internal connexion than that they are 
assigned respectively to the twelve months of the yea«. 
They are all different in subject, metre, character, and ex- 
cellence. They are called j^glogues^ according to the 
whimsical derivation adopted from the Italians of the 
word which the classical writers call Eclogues : ^''^glogai^ 
as it were aiyibv or alyoi^ofjiojy \6yoi ; that is, Goatherd's 
Tales." The book is in its form an imitation of that high- 
ly artificial kind of poetry which the later Italians of th6 
Renaissance had copied from Virgil, as Virgil had copied 
it from the Sicilian and Alexandrian Greeks, and to which 
had been given the name of Bucolic or Pastoral. Petrarch, 
in imitation of Virgil, had written Latin Bucolics, as he 
liad written a Latin Epic, his Africa, He was followed in 



40 SPENSER. [cHAr. 

the next century by Baptista Mantuanus (1448-1516), the 
" old Mantaan," of Holofernes in Love's Labour s Lost, 
whose Latin "Eglogues" became a favourite school-book in 
England, and who was imitated by a writer who passed for 
a poet in the time of Hcmry VIIL, Alexander Barclay. In 
the hands of the Sicilians, pastoral poetry may have been 
an attempt at idealizing country life almost as genuine as 
some of Wordsworth's poems; but it soon ceased to be 
that, and in Alexandrian hands it took its place among the 
recognized departments of classic and literary copying, in 
which Virgil found and used it. But a further step had 
been made since Virgil had adopted it as an instrument of 
his genius. In the hands of Mantuan and Barclay it was 
a vehicle for general moralizing, and in particular for se- 
vere satire on women and the clergy. And Virgil, though 
he may himself speak under the names of Tityrus and Me- 
aalcas, and lament Julius Cfesar as Daphnis, did not conceive 
of the Roman world as peopled by flocks and sheep-cotes, 
or its emperors and chiefs, its poets, senators and ladies, 
as shepherds and shepherdesses, of higher or lower degree. 
But in Spenser's time, partly through undue reference to 
what was supposed to be Italian taste, partly owing to the 
tardiness of national culture, and because the poetic im- 
pulses had not yet gained power to force their way through 
the embarrassment and awkwardness which accompany re- 
viving art — the world was turned, for the purposes of the 
poetry of civil life, into a pastoral scene. Poetical inven- 
tion was held to consist in imagining an environment, a set 
of outward ciicumstances, as unlike as possible to the fa- 
miliar realitie^ of actual life and employment, in which the 
primary affections and passions had their play. A fantas- 
tic basis, varying according to the conventions of the fash- 
ion, was held essential for the representation of the ideal. 



II.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 41 

Masquerade and hyperbole were the stage and scenery on 
whicli the poet's sweetness, or tenderness, or strength was 
to be put forth. The masquerade, when his subject be- 
longed to peace, was one of shepherds : when it was one 
of war and adventure, it was a masquerade of knight-er- 
rantry. But a masquerade was necessary, if he was to raise 
his composition above the vulgarities and trivialities of the 
street,* the fireside, the camp, or even the court ; if he w^as 
to give it the dignity, the ornament, the unexpected re- 
sults, the brightness and colour which belong to poetry. 
The fashion had the sanction of the brilliant author of 
the Arcadia, the " Courtier, Soldier, Scholar," who was the 
"mould of form," and whose judgment was law to all 
men of letters in the middle years of Elizabeth, the all- 
accomplished Philip Sidney. Spenser submitted to this 
fashion from first to last. When he ventured on a consid- 
erable poetical enterprise, he spoke his thoughts, not in his 
own name, nor as his contemporaries ten years later did, 
through the mouth of characters in a tragic or comic dra- 
ma, but through imaginary rustics, to whom every one else 
in the world was a rustic, and lived among the sheep-folds, 
with a background of downs or vales or fields, and the open 
sky above. His shepherds and goatherds bear the homely 
names of native English clowns, Diggon Davie, Willye, and 
Piers ; Colin Clout, adopted from Skelton, stands for Spen- 
ser himself ; Hobbinol, for Gabriel Harvey ; Cuddie, per- 
haps for Edward Kirke ; names revived by Ambrose Phil- 
lips, and laughed at by Pope, when pastorals again came 
into vogue with the wits of Queen Anne.^ With them 
are mingled classical ones like Menalcas, French ones from 
Marot, anagrams like Algrind for Grindal, significanU ones 

' In the Guardian, No. 40. Compare Johnson's Life of Ambrose 

riuiiips. 

D 3 



42 SPENSER. [chap. 

like Palinode, plain ones like Lettice, and romantic ones 
like Rosalind ; and no incongruity seems to be found in 
matching a beautiful shepherdess named Dido with a Great 
Shepherd called Lobbin, or, when the verse requires it, 
Lobb. And not merely the speakers in the dialogue are 
shepherds ; every one is in their view a shepherd. Chaucer 
is the " god of shepherds," and Orpheus is a — 

" Shepherd that did fetch his dame 
From Phitoe's baleful bower withouten leave." 

The " fair Elisa ' is the Queen of shepherds all ; her great 
father is Pan, the shepherds' god ; and Anne Boleyn is 
Syrinx. It is no^ unnatural that when the clergy are 
spoken of, as they are in three of the poems, the figure 
should be kept up. But it is curious to find that the 
shepherds' god, the great Pan, who stands in one connex- 
ion for Henry VIIT., should in another represent in sober 
earnest the Redeemer and Judge of the world.' 

The poems framed in this grotesque setting are on many 
themes, and of various merit, and probably of different 
dates. Some are simply amatory effusions of an ordinary 
character, full of a lover's despair and complaint. Three 
or four are translations or imitations ; translations from 
Marot, imitations from Theocritus, Bion, or Virgil. Two 
of them contain fables told with great force and humour. 
The story of the Oak and the Briar, related, as his friendly 
commentator Kirke says, " so lively and so feelingly, as if 
the thing were set forth in some picture before our eyes," 
for the warning of " disdainful younkers," is a first-fruit, 
and promise of Spenser's skill in vivid narrative. The fa- 
ble of the Fox and the Kid, a curious illustration of the 
popular discontent at the negligence of the clergy, and the 
' Shepherd's Calendar^ Maj, July, and September. 



II.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 43 

popular suspicions about the arts of Roman intriguers, is 
told with great spirit, and with mingled humour and pa- 
thos. There is, of course, a poem in honour of the great 
queen, who was the goddess of their idolatry to all the 
wits and all the learned of England, the " faire Eliza," and 
a compliment is paid to Leicester, 

" The worthy whom she loveth best, — 
That first the White Bear to the stake did bring." 

Two of them are avowedly burlesque imitations of rus- 
tic dialect and banter, carried on with much spirit. One 
composition is a funeral tribute to some unknown lady; 
another is a complaint of the neglect of poets by the great. 
In three of the ^glogues he comes on a more serious 
theme ; they are vigorous satires on the loose living and 
greediness of clergy forgetful of their charge, with strong 
invectives against foreign corruption and against the wiles 
of the wolves and foxes of Rome, with frequent allusions 
to passing incidents in the guerilla war with the seminary 
priests, and with a warm eulogy on the faithfulness and 
wisdom of Archbishop Grindal ; whose name is disguised 
as old Algrind, and with whom in his disgrace the poet is 
not afraid to confess deep sympathy. They are, in a po- 
etical form, part of that manifold and varied system of 
Puritan aggression on the established ecclesiastical order 
of England, which went through the whole scale from the 
"Admonition to Parliament," and the lectures of Cart- 
wright and Travers, to the libels of Martin Mar-prelate : a 
system of attack which, with all its injustice and violence, 
and with all its mischievous purposes, found but too much 
justification in the inefficiency and corruption of many 
both of the bishops and clergy, and in the rapacious and 
selfish policy of the government, forced to starve and crip- 



44 SPENSER. [cnAi-. 

pie the public service, while great men and favourites built 
up their fortunes out of the prodigal indulgence of the 
Queen. 

The collection of poems is thus a very miscellaneous 
one, and cannot be said to be in its subjects inviting. The 
poet's system of composition, also, has the disadvantage of 
being to a great degree unreal, forced, and unnatural. De- 
parting from the precedent of Virgil and the Italians, but 
perhaps copying the artificial Doric of the Alexandrians, 
he professes to make his language and style suitable to the 
" ragged and rustical " rudeness of tlie shepherds whom he 
brings on the scene, by making it both archaic and pro- 
vincial. He found in Chaucer a store of forms and words 
sufficiently well known to be with a little help intelligible, 
and sufficiently out of common use to give the character 
of antiquity to a poetry which employed them. And from 
his sojourn in the North he is said to have imported a cer- 
tain number of local peculiarities which would seem unfa- 
miliar and harsh in the South. His editor's apology for 
this use of " ancient solemn words," as both proper and 
as ornamental, is worth quoting ; it is an early instance of 
what is supposed to be not yet common, a sense of pleas- 
ure in that wildness which we call picturesque. 

" And first for the words to speak : I grant they be something 
hard, and of most men unused : yet English, and also used of most 
excellent Authors and most famous Poets, In whom, when as this 
our Poet hath been much travelled and throughly read, how could 
it be (as that worthy Orator said), but that ' walking in the sun, 
although for other cause he walked, yet needs he mought be sun- 
burnt ;' and having the sound of those ancient poets still ringing in 
his ears, he mought needs, in singing, hit out some of their tunes. 
But whether he useth them by such casualty and custom, or of set 
purpose and choice, as thinking them fittest for such rustical rude- 
ness of shepherds, either for that their rough sound would make his 



11.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 45 

rymes more ragged and rustical, or else because such old and obso- 
lete words are most used of country folks, sure I think, and I think 
not amiss, that they bring great grace, and, as one would say, author- 
ity, to the verse, . . . Yet neither everywhere must old words be 
stuffed in, nor the common Dialect and manner of speaking so cor- 
rupted thereby, that, as in old buildings, it seem disorderly and ruin- 
ous. But as in most exquisite pictures they use to blaze and por- 
trait not only the dainty lineaments of beauty, but also round about 
it to shadow the rude thickets and craggj' cliffs, that by the base- 
ness of such parts, more excellency may accrue to the principal — for 
ofttimes we find ourselves I know not how, singularly delighted with 
the show of such natural rudeness, and take great pleasure in that 
disorderly order: — even so do these rough and harsh terms enlu- 
mine, and make more clearly to appear, the brightness of brave and 
glorious words. So oftentimes a discord in music maketh a comely 
concordance." 

But when allowance is made for an eclectic and some- 
times pedantic phraseology, and for mannerisms to which 
the fashion of the age tempted him, such as the extrava- 
gant use of alliteration, or, as they called it, " hunting the 
letter," the Shepherd^s Calendar is, for its time, of great 
interest. 

Spenser's force, and sustained poetical power, and singu- 
larly musical ear are conspicuous in this first essay of his 
genius. In the poets before him of this century, fragments 
and stanzas, and perhaps single pieces might be found, 
which might be compared with his w^ork. Fugitive pieces, 
chiefly amatory, meet us of real sprightliness, or grace, or 
tenderness. The stanzas which Sackville, afterwards Lord 
Buckhurst, contributed to the collection called the Mirror 
of Magistrates,^ are marked with a pathetic majesty, a gen- 
uine sympathy for the precariousness of greatness, which 
seem a prelude to the Elizabethan drama. But these frag- 

^ First published in 1559. It was a popular book, and was often 
re-edited. 



46 SPENSER. [chap. 

ments were mostly felicitous efforts, which soon passed on 
into the ungainly, the uncouth, the obscure, or the gro- 
tesque. But in the Shepherd' s Calendar we have for the 
first time in the century, the swing, the command, the va- 
ried resources of the real poet, who is not driven by fail- 
ing language or thought into frigid or tumid absurdities. 
Spenser is master over himself and his instrument even 
when he uses it in a way which offends our taste. There 
are passages in the ShephercTs Calendar of poetical elo- 
quence, of refined vigour, and of musical and imaginative 
sweetness, such as the English language had never attained 
to since the days of him who was to the age of Spenser 
what Shakespere and Milton are to ours, the pattern and 
fount of poetry, Chaucer. Dryden is not afraid to class 
Spenser with Theocritus and Virgil, and to write that the 
Shepherd'' s Calendar is not to be matched in any lan- 
guage.^ And this was at once recognized. The author- 
ship of it, as has been said, was not formally acknowledged. 
Indeed, Mr. Collier remarks that seven years after its pub- 
lication, and after it had gone through three or four sepa- 
rate editions, it was praised by a contemporary poet, George 
Whetstone, himself a friend of Spenser's, as the " reputed 
work of Sir Philip Sidney." But if it was officially a se- 
cret, it was an open secret, known to every one who cared 
to be well informed. It is possible that the free language 
used in it about ecclesiastical abuses was too much in sym- 
pathy with the growing fierceness and insolence of Puri- 
tan invective to be safely used by a poet who gave his 
name : and one of the reasons assigned for Burghley's dis- 
like to Spenser is the praise bestowed in the Shepherd's 
Calendar on Archbishop Grindal, then in deep disgrace 
for resisting the suppression of the puritan prophesyings. 
' Dedication to Yiml. 



n.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 47 

But anonymous as it was, it had been placed under Sid- 
ney's protection ; and it was at once warmly welcomed. 
It is not often that in those remote days we get evidence 
of the immediate effect of a book; but we have this evi- 
dence in Spenser's case. In this year, probably, after it 
was published, we find it spoken of by Philip Sidney, not 
without discriminating criticism, but as one of the few re- 
cent examples of poetry worthy to be named after Chaucer. 

" 1 account the Mirror of Magistrates meetly furnished of beauti- 
ful parts ; and in the Earl of Surrey's Lyrics many things tasting of 
birth, and worthy of a noble mind. The Shepherd's Calendar hath 
much poetry in his Eglogues : indeed worthy the reading if I be not 
deceived. • That same framing of his style in an old rustic language 
I dare not allow, sith neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, 
nor Sanazar in Italian, did affect it. Besides these do I not remem- 
ber to have seen but few (to speak boldly) printed that have poetical 
sinews in them." 

Sidney's patronage of the writer and general approval 
of the work doubtless had something to do with making 
Spenser's name known : but he at once takes a place in 
contemporary judgment which no one else takes, till the 
next decade of the century. In 1586, Webbe published 
his Discouse of English Poetrie. In this, the author of 
the Shepherd's Calendar is spoken of by the name given 

him by its Editor, E. K , as the "new poet," just as, 

earlier in the century, the Orlando Furioso was styled the 
" nuova poesia ;" and his work is copiously used to supply 
examples and illustrations of the critic's rules and observa- 
tions. Webbe's review of existing poetry was the most 
comprehensive yet attempted : but the place which he 
gives to the new poet, whose name was in men's mouths, 
though, like the author of In Memoriam^ he had not placed 
it on the title-page, was one quite apart. 



48 SPENSER. [chap. 

" This place [to wear the Laurel] have I purposely reserved for 
one, who, if not only, yet in my judgment principally, deserveth the 
title of the Tightest English poet that ever I read : that is, the author 
of the Shephenrs Calendar, intituled to the worthy Gentleman Master 
Philip Sidney, whether it was Master Sp. or what rare scholar in Pem- 
broke Hall soever, because himself and his friends, for what respect 
I know not, would not reveal it, I force not greatly to set down. Sor- 
ry I am that I cannot find none other with whom I might couple him 
in this catalogue in his rare gift of poetry : although one there is, 
though now long since seriously occupied in graver studies. Master 
Gabriel Harvey, yet as he was once his most special friend and fel- 
low poet, so because he hath taken such pains not only in his Latin 
poetry .' . . but also to reform our English verse . . . therefore will 
I adventure to set them together as two of the rarest wits and learn- 
edest masters of poetry in England." 

He even ventured to compare him favourably witii 
Virgil. 

" But now yet at the last hath England hatched up one poet of 
this sort, in my conscience comparable with the best in any respect : 
even Master Sp., author of the Shepherd's Calemlar, whose travail in 
that piece of English poetry I think verily is so commendable, as 
none of equal judgment can yield him less praise for his excellent 
skill and skilful excellency showed forth in the same than they would 
to either Theocritus or Virgil, whom in mine opinion, if the coarse- 
ness of our speech (I mean the course of custom which he would not 
infringe), had been no more let unto him than their pure native 
tongues were unto them, he would have, if it might be, surpassed 
them." 

The courtly author of the Arte of English Poesie, 1589, 
commonly cited as G. Puttenham, classes him with Sidney. 
And from this time his name occurs in every enumeration 
of English poetical writers, till he appears, more than justi- 
fying this early appreciation of his genius, as Chaucer's not 
unworthy successor, in the Faerie Queene. Afterwards, 
as other successful poetry was written, and the standards 



II.] THE NEW POET— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. 49 

of taste were multiplied, this first enthusiastic reception 
cooled down. In James the First's time, Spenser's use 
of " old outworn words " is criticised as being no more 
" practical English " than Chaucer or Skelton : it is not 
"courtly" enough/ The success of the Shepherd's Cal- 
endar had also, apparently, substantial results, which some 
of his friends thought of with envy. They believed that 
it secured him high patronage, and opened to him a way 
to fortune. Poor Gabriel Harvey, writing in the year in 
which the Shepherd's Calendar came out, contrasts his own 
less favoured lot, and his ill -repaid poetical efforts, with 
Colin Clout's good luck, 

" But ever and ever, methinks, your great Catoes, Ecqiiid erit pretii^ 
and our little Catoes, Res age quce prosunt, make such a buzzing and 
ringing in my head, that I have little joy to animate and encourage 
either you or him to go forward, unless ye might make account of 
some certain ordinary wages, or at the least wise have your meat and 
drink for your day's works. As for myself, howsoever I have toyed 
and trifled heretofore, I am now taught, and I trust I shall shortly 
learn (no remedy, I must of mere necessity give you over in the plain 
field), to employ my travail and time wholly or chiefly on those stud- 
ies and practices that carry, as they say, meat in their mouth, having 
evermore their eye upon the Title, De pane lucrando, and their hand 
upon their halfpenny. For I pray now what saith Mr. Cuddie, alias 
you know who, in the tenth ^glogue of the aforesaid famous new 
Calendar. 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 4^ 

" ' The dapper ditties, that I wont devise 

To feed youths' fancy and the flocking fry, 

Delighten much : what I the best for thy ? 
They han the pleasure, I a sclender prize, 

I beat the bush, the birds to them do fly. 
What good thereof to Cuddie can arise ?' 

" But Master Colin Clout is not everybody, and albeit his old com- 

' Bolton in Haslewood, ii. 249. 
3* 



50 SPENSER. [chap. ii. 

panions, Master Caddie and Master HobinoU, be as little beholding to 
their mistress poetry as ever you wist : yet he, peradventure, by the 
means of her special favour, and some personal privilege, may haply 
live by Dying Pelicans^ and purchase great lands and lordships with 
the money which his Calendar and Breams have, and will afford 
him." 



CHAPTER III. 

SPENSER IN IRELAND. 

[1580.] 

In the first week of October, 1579, Spenser was at Leices- 
ter House, expecting " next week " to be despatched on 
Leicester's service to France. AVhether he was sent or 
not, we do not know. Gabriel Harvey, writing at the end 
of the month, wagers that " for all his saying, he will not 
be gone over sea, neither this week nor the next." In 
one of the ^glogues (September) there are some lines 
which suggest, but do not necessarily imply, the experi- 
ence of an eye-witness of the state of religion in a Roman 
Catholic country. But we can have nothing but con- 
jecure whether at this time or any other Spenser was on 
the Continent. The Shepher(Vs Calendar was entered at 
Stationers' Hall, December 5, 1579. In April, 1580, as we 
know from one of his letters to Harvey, he was at West- 
minster. He speaks of the Shepherd's Calendar as pub- 
lished ; he is contemplating the publication of other 
pieces, and then " he will in hand forthwith with his Faerie 
Queene^'' of which he had sent Harvey a specimen. He 
speaks especially of his Dreams as a considerable work. 

" I take best my Dreams should come forth alone, being grown 
by means of the Gloss (running continually in manner of a Para- 
phrase) full as great as my Calendar. Therein be some things ex- 



52 SPENSER. [chap. 

eelleiitly, and many things wittily discoursed of E. K., and the pictures 
so singularly set forth and portrayed, as if Michael Angelo were 
there, he could (I think) nor amend the best, nor reprehend the 
worst. I know you would like them passing well," 

It is remarkable that of a book so spoken of, as of the 
Nine Comedies, not a trace, as far as appears, is to be 
found. He goes on to speak with much satisfaction of 
another composition, which was probably incorporated, 
like the Epithalamion Thamesis, in his later work. 

" Of my Stemraata Dudleiana, and specially of the sundry Apostro- 
phes therein, addressed you know to whom, much more advisement 
he had, than so lightly to send them abroad : now list, trust me 
(though I do never very well) yet, in mine own fancy, I never did bet- 
ter. Venmtamen te sequor solum: nungiiam vero asseqiiar.'''' 

He is plainly not dissatisfied with his success, and is 
looking forward to more. But no one in those days could 
live by poetry. Even scholars, in spite of university en- 
dowments, did not hope to live by their scholarship ; and 
the poet or man of letters only trusted that his work, by 
attracting the favour of the great, might open to him the 
door of advancement. Spenser was probably expecting 
to push his fortunes in some public employment under 
the patronage of two such powerful favourites as Sidney 
and his uncle Leicester. Spenser's heart was set on poe- 
try: but what leisure he might have for it would depend 
on the course his life might take. To have hung on Sid- 
ney's protection, or gone with him as his secretary to the 
wars, to have been employed at home or abroad in Leices- 
ter's intrigues, to have stayed in London filling by Leices- 
ter's favour some government office, to have had his hab- 
its moulded and his thoughts affected by the brilliant and 
unscrupulous society of the court, or by the powerful and 



III.] SPENSER IX IRELAND. 53 

daring- minds which were fast thronging the political and 
literary scene — any of these contingencies might have 
given his poetical faculty a different direction ; nay, might 
have even abridged its exercise or suppressed it. But his 
life was otherwise ordered. A new opening presented 
itself. He had, and he accepted, the chance of making 
his fortune another way. And to his new manner of life, 
with its peculiar conditions, may be ascribed, not, indeed, 
the original idea of that which was to be his great work, 
but the circumstances under which the work was carried 
out, and which not merely coloured it, but gave it some of 
its special and characteristic features. 

That which turned the course of his career, and exer- 
cised a decisive influence, certainly on its events and fate, 
probably also on the turn of his thoughts and the shape 
and moulding of his work, was his migration to Ireland, 
and his settlement there for the greater part of the re- 
maining eighteen years of his life. We know little more 
than the main facts of this change from the court and the 
growing intellectual activity of England, to the fierce and 
narrow interests of a cruel and unsuccessful struggle for 
colonization, in a country which was to England much 
what Algeria was to France some thirty years ago. Ire- 
land, always unquiet, had become a serious danger to 
Elizabeth's Government. It was its "bleeding ulcer." 
Lord Essex's great colonizing scheme, with his unscrupu- 
lous severity, had failed. Sir Henry Sidney, wise, firm, 
and wishing to be just, had tried his hand as Deputy for 
the third time in the thankless charge of keeping order; 
he, too, after a short gleam of peace, had failed also. For 
two years Ireland had been left to the local administra- 
tion, totally unable to heal its wounds, or cope with its 
disorders. And now, the kmgdom threatened to becomo 



^ 



54 SPENSER. [chap. 

a vantage-ground to the foreign enemy. In November, 
1579, the Government turned their eyes on Arthur, Lord 
Grey of Wilton, a man of high character, and a soldier 
of distinction. He, or they, seem to have hesitated ; or, 
rather, the hesitation was on both sides. He was not 
satisfied with many things in the policy of the Queen in 
England : his discontent had led him, strong Protestant 
as he was, to coquet with Norfolk and the partisans of 
Mary Queen of Scots, when England was threatened with 
a French marriage ten years before. His name stands 
among the forty nobles on whom Mary's friends counted.' 
And on the other hand, Elizabeth did not like him or 
trust him. For some time she refused to employ him. 
At length, in the summer of 1580, he was appointed to- 
fill that great place which had wrecked the reputation and 
broken the hearts of a succession of able and high-spirited 
servants of the English Crown, the place of Lord-Deputy 
in Ireland. He was a man who was interested in the lit- 
erary enterprise of the time. In the midst of his public 
employment in Holland, he had been the friend and patron 
of George Gascoigne, who left a high reputation, for those 
days, as poet, wit, satirist, and critic. Lord Grey now took 
Spenser, the " new poet," the friend of Philip Sidney, to 
Ireland as his Secretary. 

Spenser was not the only scholar and poet who about 
this time found public employment in Ireland. Names 
which appear in literary records, such as Warton's History 
of English Poetry, poets like Barnaby Googe and Ludo- 
vic Bryskett, reappear as despatch-writers or agents in the 
Irish State Papers. But one man came over to Ireland 
about the same time as Spenser, whose fortunes were a 
contrast to his. Geoffrey Fenton was one of the numer- 
1 Froude, x. 158. 



III.] SPENSER IN IRELAND. 56 

ous translators of the time. He had dedicated Tragical 
Tales from the French and Italian to Lady Mary Sidney, 
Guevara's Epistles from the Spanish to Lady Oxford, and 
a translation of Guicciardini to the Queen. About this 
time, he was recommended by his brother to Walsingham 
for foreign service ; he was soon after in Ireland : and in 
the summer of 1580 he was made Secretary to the Gov- 
ernment. He shortly became one of the most important 
persons in the Irish administration. He corresponded 
confidentially and continually with Burghley and Walsing- 
ham. He had his eye on the proceedings of Deputies and 
Presidents, and reported freely their misdoings or their 
unpopularity. His letters form a considerable part of the 
Irish Papers. He became a powerful and successful pub- 
lic servant. He became Sir Geoffrey Fenton ; he kept his 
high place for his life ; he obtained grants and lands ; and 
he was commemorated as a great personage in a pompous 
monument in St. Patrick's Cathedral. This kind of suc- 
cess was not to be Spenser's. 

Lord Grey of Wilton was a man in whom his friends 
saw a high and heroic spirit. He was a statesman in 
whose motives and actions his religion had a dominant 
influence: and his religion — he is called by the vague 
name of Puritan — was one which combined a strong and 
doubtless genuine zeal for the truth of Christian doctrine 
and for purity of morals, with the deepest and deadliest 
hatred of what he held to be their natural enemy, the 
Antichrist of Rome. The " good Lord Grey," he was, 
if we believe his secretary, writing many years after this 
time, and when he was dead, " most gentle, affable, loving, 
and temperate ; always known to be a most just, sincere, 
godly, and right noble man, far from sternness, far from 
unrighteousness." But the infelicity of his times bore 



56 SPENSER. [chap. 

hardly upon him, and Spenser admits, what is known 
otherwise, that he left a terrible name behind him. He 
was certainly a man of severe and unshrinking sense of 
duty, and like many great Englishmen of the time, so res- 
olute in carrying it out to the end, that it reached, when 
he thought in necessary, to the point of ferocity. Nat- 
urally, he had enemies, who did not spare his fame ; and 
Spenser, who came to admire and reverence him, had to 
lament deeply that " that good lord was blotted with the 
name of a bloody man," one who " regarded not the life 
of the queen's subjects no more than dogs, and had wasted 
and consumed all, so as now she had nothing almost left, 
but to reign in their ashes." 

Lord Grey was sent over at a moment of the utmost 
confusion and danger. In July, 1579, Drury wrote to 
Burghley to stand firmly to the helm, for "that a great 
storm was at hand." The South of Ireland was in fierce 
rebellion, under the Earl of Desmond and Dr. Nicolas 
Sanders, who was acting under the commission of the 
Pope, and promising the assistance of the King of Spain ; 
and a band of Spanish and Italian adventurers, unauthor- 
ized, but not uncountenanced by their Government, like 
Drake in the Indies, had landed with arms and stores, and 
had fortified a port at Smerwick, on the south-western 
coast of Kerry. The North was deep in treason, restless, 
and threatening to strike. Round Dublin itself, the great 
Irish Lords of the Pale, under Lord Baltinglass, in the 
summer of 1580, had broken into open insurrection, and 
were holding out a hand to the rebels of the South. The 
English garrison, indeed, small as they were, could not 
only hold their own against the ill -armed and undis- 
ciplined Irish bands, but could inflict terrible chastisement 
un the insurgents. The native feuds were turned to ac- 



III.] SPENSER IN IRELAND. 57 

count ; Butlers were set to destroy their natural enemies, 
the Geraldines ; and the Earl of Ormond, their head, was 
appointed General in Munster, to execute English ven- 
geance and his own on the lands and people of his rival 
Desmond. But the English chiefs were not strong enough 
to put down the revolt. " The conspiracy throughout Ire- 
land," wrote Lord Grey, "is so general, that without a 
main force it will not be appeased. There are cold service 
and unsound dealing generally." On the 12th of August, 
1580, Lord Grey landed, amid a universal wreck of order, 
of law, of mercy, of industry ; and among his counsellors 
and subordinates, the only remedy thought of was that of 
remorseless and increasing severity. 

It can hardly be doubted that Spenser must have come 
over with him. It is likely that where he went his Sec- 
retary would accompany him. And if so, Spenser must 
soon have become acquainted with some of the scenes and 
necessities of Irish life. Within three weeks after Lord 
Grey's landing, he and those with him were present at the 
disaster of Glenmalure, a rocky defile near Wicklow, where 
the rebels enticed the English captains into a position in 
which an ambuscade had been prepared, after the manner 
of Red Indians in the last century, and of South African 
savages now, and where, in spite of Lord Grey's courage, 
"which could not have been bettered by Hercules," a bloody 
defeat was inflicted on his troops, and a number of dis- 
tinguished officers were cut off. But Spenser was soon to 
see a still more terrible example of this ruthless warfare. 
It was necessary, above all things, to destroy the Spanish 
fort at Smerwick, in order to prevent the rebellion being 
fed from abroad: and in November, 1580, Lord Grey in 
person undertook the work. The incidents of this tragedy 

have been fully recorded, and they formed at the time a 
E 



58 SPENSER. [chap. 

heavy charge against Lord Grey's humanity, and even his 
honour. In this instance Spenser must ahnost certainly 
have been on the spot. Years afterwards, in his View of 
the State of Ireland, he describes and vindicates Lord 
Grey's proceedings ; and he does so, " being," as he writes, 
" as near them as any." And we have Lord Grey's own 
despatch to Queen Elizabeth, containing a full report of 
the tragical business. We have no means of knowing how 
Lord Grey employed Spenser, or whether he composed his 
own despatches. But from Spenser's position, the Secre- 
tary, if he had not some hand in the following vivid and 
forcible account of the taking of Smerwick,^ must prob- 
ably have been cognizant of it; though there are some 
slight differences in the despatch, and in the account w^hich 
Spenser himself wrote afterwards in his pamphlet on Lish 
Affairs. 

After describing the proposal of the garrison for a par- 
ley. Lord Grey proceeds — 

" There was presently sent unto me one Alexandre, their camp 
master; he told me that certain Spaniards and Italians were there 
arrived upon fair speeches and great promises, which altogether vain 
and false they found; and that it was no part of their intent to 
molest or take any government from your MajCvSty ; for proof, that 
xhey were ready to depart as they came and deliver into my hands 
the fort. Mine answer was, that for that I perceived their people to 
stand of two nations, Italian and Spanish, I would give no answer 
unless a Spaniard was likewise by. He presently went and returned 
with a Spanish captain. I then told the Spaniard that I knew their 
nation to have an absolute prince, one that was in good league and 
amity with your Majesty, which made me to marvell that any of his 
people should be found associate with them that went about to main- 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1574—1585. Mr. II. C. Ham- 
ilton's Pref. p. Ixxi.-lxxiii. Nov. 12, 1580. 



iir;] SPENSER IX IRELAND. 59 

tain rebels against you. . . . And taking it that it could not be his 
king's will, I was to know by whom and for what cause they were 
sent. His reply was that the king had not sent them, but that one 
John Martinez de Ricaldi, Governor for the king at Bilboa, had will- 
ed him to levy a band and repair with it to St. Andrews (Santander), 
and there to be directed by this their colonel here, whom he follow- 
ed as a blind man, not knowing whither. The other avouched that 
they were all sent by the Pope for the defence of the Catlwlica fede. 
My answer was, that I would not greatly have marvelled if men be- 
ing commanded by natural and absolute princes did sometimes take 
in hand wrong actions ; but that men, and that of account as some 
of them made show of, should be carried into unjust, desperate, and 
wicked actions, by one that neither from God or man could claim 
any princely power or empire, but (was) indeed a detestable shave- 
ling, the right Antichrist and general ambitious tyrant over all right 
principalities, and patron of the DiaboJk-a fede — this I could not but 
greatly rest in wonder. Their fault therefore far to be aggravated 
by the vileness of their commander ; and that at my hands no con- 
dition or composition they were to expect, other than they should 
render me the fort, and yield their selves to my will for life or death. 
With this answer he departed ; after which there was one or two 
courses to and fro more, to have gotten a certainty for some of their 
lives : but finding that it would not be, the colonel himself about 
sunsetting came forth and requested respite with surcease of arms 
till the next morning, and then he would give a resolute answer. 

" Finding that to be but a gain of time to them, and a loss of the 
same for myself, I definitely answered I would not grant it, and 
therefore presently either that he took my offer or else return and 
I Avould fall to my business. He then embraced my knees simply 
putting himself to my mercy, only he prayed that for that night he 
might abide in the fort, and that in the morning all should be put 
into my hands. I asked hostages for the performance; they were 
given. Morning came ; I presented my companies in battle before 
the fort, the colonel comes forth with ten or twelve of his chief gen- 
tlemen, trailing their ensigns rolled up, and presented them unto me 
with their lives and the fort. I sent straight certain gentlemen in, 
to see their weapons and armour laid down, and to guard the muni- 
tion and victual there left for spoil. Then I put in certain bands, 



60 SPENSER. [ciui-. 

who straight fell to execution. There were six hundred slain. 
Munition and victual great store: though much wasted through the 
disorder of the soldier, which in that fury could not be helped. 
Those that I gave life unto, I have bestowed upon the captains and 
gentlemen whose service hath well deserved. ... Of the six hundred 
slain, foiir hundred wei'e as gallant and goodly personages as of any 
(soldiers) I ever beheld. So hath it pleased the Lord of Hosts to 
deliver your enemies into your Highnesses' hand, and so too as one 
only excepted, not one of yours is either lost or hurt." 

Another account adds to this that "the Irish men and 
women were hanged, with an Englishman who had served 
Dr. Sanders, and two others wiiose arms and legs were 
broken for torture.'' 

Such scenes as those of Glenmalure and Smerwick, ter- 
rible as they were, it might have been any one's lot to wit- 
ness who lived himself in presence of the atrocious war- 
fare of those cruel days, in which the ordinary exaspera- 
tion of combatants was made more savage and unforgiving 
by religious hatred, and by the license which religious ha- 
tred gave to irregular adventure and the sanguinary re- 
pression of it. They were not confined to Ireland. Two 
yeai-s later the Mar(juis de Santa Cruz treated in exactly 
the same fashion a band of French adventurers, some eigh- 
ty noblemen and gentlemen and two hundred soldiers, 
who were taken in an attempt on the Azores during a 
time of nominal peace between the crowns of France and 
Spain. In the Low Countries, and in the religious wars 
of France, it need not be said that even the " execution " 
at Smerwick was continually outdone; and it is what the 
Spaniards would of course have done to Drake if they had 
caught him. Nor did the Spanish Government complain 
of this treatment of its subjects, who had no legal com- 



III.] SPEXSER IX IRELAXD. 61 

But the cliange of scene and life to Spenser was much 
more than merely the sight of a disastrous skirmish and 
a capitulation without quarter. He had passed to an en- 
tirely altered condition of social life ; he had passed from 
pleasant and merry England, with its comparative order 
and peace, its thriving homesteads and w^ealthy cities, its 
industry and magnificence — 

" Eliza's blessed field, 
That still with people, peace, and plenty flows — " 

to a land, beautiful indeed, and alluring, but of which the 
only law was disorder, and the only rule failure. The 
Cambridge student, the follower of country life in Lanca- 
shire or Kent, the scholar discussing with Philip Sidney 
and corresponding with Gabriel Harvey about classical 
metres and English rimes; the shepherd poet, (John Clout, 
delicately fashioning his innocent pastorals, his love com- 
plaints, or his dexterous panegyrics or satires ; the cour- 
tier, aspiring to shine in the train of Leicester before the 
eyes of the great queen — found himself transplanted into 
a wild and turbulent savagery, where the elements of civil 
society hardly existed, and which had the fatal power of 
drawing into its own evil and lawless ways the English who 
came into contact with it. Ireland had the name and the 
framework of a Christian realm. It had its hierarchy of 
officers in Church and vState, its Parliament, its representa- 
tive of the Crown. It had its great earls and lords, with 
noble and romantic titles, its courts and councils and ad- 
ministration ; the Queen's laws were there, and where they 
were acknowledged, which was not, however, everywhere, 
the English speech was current. But underneath this 
name and outside, all was coarse, and obstinately set against 
civilized order. There was nothino- but the wreck and 



\ 

62 SPENSER. \ [chap. 

clashing of disintegrated customs, tlie lawlessness of fierce 
and ignorant barbarians, whose own laws had been de- 
stroyed, and who would recognize no other; the blood-feuds 
of rival septs; the ambitious and deadly treacheries of ri- 
val nobles, oppressing all weaker than themselves, and main- 
taining in waste and idleness their crowds of brutal retain- 
ers. In one thing only was there agreement, though not 
even in this was there union ; and that was in deep, im- 
placable hatred of their English masters. And with these 
English masters, too, amid their own jealousies and back- 
bitings and mischief-making, their own bitter antipathies 
and chronic despair, there was only one point of agree- 
ment, and that was their deep scorn and loathing of the 
Irish. 

This is Irish dealing with Irish, in Munster, at this 
time : 

" The Lord Roche kept a freeholder, who had eight plowlands, pris- 
oner, and hand-locked him till he had surrendered seven plowlands 
and a half, on agreement to keep the remaining plowland free ; but 
when this was done, the Lord Roche extorted as many exactions from 
that half-plowland, as from any other half-plowland in his country. 
. . . And even the great men were under the same oppression from 
the greater: for the Earl of Desmond forcibly took away the Sene- 
schal of Imokilly's corn from his own land, though he was one of the 
most considerable gentlemen in Munster."' 

And this is English dealing with Irish : 

" Mr. Henry Sheffield asks Lord Burghley's interest with Sir George 
Carew, to be made his deputy at Leighlin, in place of Mr. Bagenall, 
who met his death under the following circumstances : 

" Mr. Bagenall, after he had bought the barony of Odrone of Sir 
George Carew, could not be contented to let the Kavanaghs enjoy 
such lands as old Sir Peter Carew, young Sir Peter, and last, Sir 

' Cox, Hist, of Ireland, 354. 



in.] SPENSER IN IRELAND. 63 

(xeorge were content that they should have, but threatened to kill 
them wherever he could meet them. As it is now fallen out, about 
the last of November, one Henry Heron, Mr. Bagenall's brother-in- 
law, having lost four kine, making that his quarrel, he being accom- 
panied with divers others to the number of twenty or thereabouts, by 
the procurement of his brother-in-law, went to the house of Mortagh 
Oge, a man seventy years old, the chief of the Kavanaghs, with their 
swords drawn : which the old man seeing, for fear of his life, sought 
to go into the woods, but was taken and brought before Mr. Heron, 
who chai-ged him that his son had taken the cows. The old man 
answered that he could pay for them. Mr. Heron would not be con- 
tented, but bade his men kill him, he desiring to be brought for trial 
at the sessions. Further, the morrow after they went again into the 
woods, and there they found another old man, a servant of Mortagh 
Oge, and likewise killed him, Mr. Heron saying that it was because 
he would not confess the cows. 

" On these murders, the sons of the old man laid an ambush for 
Mr. Bagenall ; who, following them more upon will than with discre- 
tion, fell into their hands, and was slain with thirteen more. He 
had sixteen wounds above his girdle, and one of his legs cut oif, and 
his tongue drawn out of his mouth and slit. There is not one man 
dwelling in all this country that was Sir George Carew's, but every 
man fled, and left the whole country waste ; and so I fear me it will 
continue, now the deadly feud is so great between them."* 

Something like this has been occasionally seen in our 
colonies towards the native races ; but there it never reach- 
ed the same height of unrestrained and frankly justified 
indulgence. The English officials and settlers knew well 
enough that the only thought of the native Irish was to 
restore their abolished customs, to recover their confiscated 
lands, to re-establish the crippled power of their chiefs ; 
they knew that for this insurrection was ever ready, and 
that treachery would shrink from nothing. And to meet 
it, the English on the spot — all but a few who were de- 
nounced as unpractical sentimentalists for favouring an ir- 
1 Irish Papers, March 29, 1587. 



64 SPENSER. [chap. 

reconcilable foe— rcould think of no way of enforcing order 
except by a wholesale use of the sword and the gallows. 
They could find no means of restoring peace except turn- 
ing the rich land into a wilderness, and rooting out by 
famine those whom the soldier or the hangman had not 
overtaken. " No governor shall do any good here," wrote 
an English observer in 1581, "except he show himself a 
Tamerlane." 

In a general account, even contemporary, such statements 
might suggest a violent suspicion of exaggeration. We 
possess the means of testing it. The Irish State Papers of 
the time contain the ample reports and letters, from day to 
day, of the energetic and resolute Englishmen employed in 
council or in the field — men of business like Sir AVilliam 
Pelham, Sir Henry Wallop, Edward Waterhouse, and Geof- 
frey Fenton ; — dai-ing and brilliant officers like Sir William 
Drury, Sir Nicolas Malby, Sir Warham St. Leger, Sir John 
Norreys, and John Zouch. Tiiese papers are the basis of 
Mr. Fronde's terrible chapters on the Desmond rebellion, 
and their substance in abstract or abridgment is easily ac- 
cessible in the printed calendars of the Record Office. They 
show that from first to last, in principle and practice, in 
council and in act, the Tamerlane system was believed in, 
and carried out without a trace of remorse or question as 
to its morality. " If hell w^ere open, and all the evil spirits 
were abroad," writes Walsingham's correspondent, Andrew 
Trollope, who talked about Tamerlane, " they could never 
be worse than these Irish rogues — rather dogs, and worse 
tjian dogs, for dogs do but after their kind, and they de- 
generate from all humanity." There is but one way of 
dealirg with wild dogs or wolves; and accordingly the 
English chiefs insisted that this was the way to deal with 
the Irish. The state of Ireland, writes one, "is like an old 



m.] SPExVSER IN IRELAND. 65 

cloak often before patched, wlierein is now made so great 
a gasli that all the world doth know that there is no rem- 
edy but to make a new." This means, in the language of 
another, " that there is no way to daunt these people but 
by the edge of the sword, and to plant better in their 
place, or rather, let them cut one another's throats." 
These were no idle words. Every page of these papers 
contains some memorandum of execution and destruction. 
The progress of a Deputy, or the President of a province, 
through the country is always accompanied with its tale 
of hangings. There is sometimes a touch of the gro- 
tesque. "At Kilkenny," writes Sir W. Drury, "the jail 
being full, we caused sessions immediately to begin. Thir- 
ty-six persons were executed, among which some good 
ones — two for treason, a blackamoor, and two witches by 
natural law, for that we found no law to try them by in 
this realm." It is like the account of some unusual kind 
of game in a successful bag. " If taking of cows, and 
killing of kerne and churles had been worth advertizing," 
writes Lord Grey to the Queen, " I would have had every 
day to have troubled your Highness." Yet Lord Grey 
protests in the same letter that he has never taken the life 
of any, however evil, who submitted. At the end of the 
Desmond outbreak, the chiefs in the different provinces 
send in their tale of death. Ormond complains of the 
false reports of his "slackness in but killing three men," 
whereas the number was more than 3000 ; and he sends 
in his "brief note" of his contribution to the slaughter, 
" 598 persons of quality, besides 3000 or 4000 others, and 
158 slain since his discharge." The end was that, as one 
of the chief actors writes. Sir Warham St. Leger, " Munster 
is nearly unpeopled by the murders done by the rebels, 
and the killings by the soldiers ; 30,000 dead of famine 

4 



66 SPENSER. [chap. 

in lialf a year, besides numbers that are hanged and killed. 
The realm," he adds, '' was never in greater danger, or in 
like misery.'' But in the murderous work itself there was 
not much danger. " Our wars," writes Sir Henry Wallop, 
in the height of the struggle, " are but like fox-hunting." 
And when the English Government remonstrates against 
this system of massacre, the Lord-Deputy writes back that 
" he sorrows that pity for the wicked and evil should be 
enchanted into her Majesty." 

And of this dreadful policy, involving, as the price of 
the extinction of Desmond's rebellion, the absolute desola- 
tion of the South and West of Ireland, Lord Grey came to 
be the deliberate and unfaltering champion. His admin- 
istration lasted only two years, and in spite of his natural 
kindness of temper, which we need not doubt, it was, from 
the supposed necessities of his position, and the unwaver- 
ing consent of all English opinions round him, a rule of 
extermination. No scruple ever crossed his mind, except 
that he had not been sufficiently uncompromising in put- 
ting first the religious aspect of the quarrel. " If Elizabeth 
had allowed him," writes Mr. Froude, " he would have now 
made a Mahommedan conquest of the whole island, and 
offered the Irish the alternative of the Gospel or the 
sword." With the terrible sincerity of a Puritan, he re- 
proached himself that he had allowed even the Queen's 
commands to come before the " one article of looking to 
God's dear service." " I confess my sin," he wrote to 
Walsingham, " I have followed man too much,'' and he 
saw why his efforts had been in vain. " Baal's prophets 
and councillors shall prevail. I see it is so. I see it is 
just. I see it past help. I rest despaired." His policy 
of blood and devastation, breaking the neck of Desmond's 
rebellion, but failing to put an end to it, became at length 



III.] /SPENSER IN IRELAND. 67 

more tlian the home Government could bear; and with 
mutual dissatisfaction he was recalled before his work was 
done. Among the documents relating to his explanations 
with the English Government, is one of which this is the 
abstract: "Declaration (Dec. 1583), by Arthur, Lord Grey 
of Wilton, to the Queen, showing the state of Ireland when 
he was appointed Deputy, with the services of his govern- 
ment, and the plight he left it in. 1485 chief men and 
gentlemen slain, not accounting those of meaner sort, nor 
yet executions by law, and killing of churles, which were 
innumerable." 

This was the world into which Spenser was abruptly 
throw^n, and in which he was henceforward to have his 
home. He first became acquainted with it as Lord Grey's 
Secretary in the Munster war. He himself in later days, 
with ample experience and knowledge, reviewed the whole 
of this dreadful history, its policy, its necessities, its re- 
sults : and no more instructive document has come down 
to us from those times. But his description of the way 
in which the plan of extermination was carried out in 
Munster before his eyes may fittingly form a supplement 
to the language on the spot of those responsible for it. 

'■'•Eudox. But what, then, shall be the conclusion of this war ? . . . 

'■^ Iren. The end will I assure me be very short and much sooner 
than can be, in so great a trouble, as it seemeth, hoped for, although 
there should none of them fall by the sword nor be slain by the sol- 
dier : yet thus being kept from manurance and their cattle from run- 
ning abroad, by this hard restraint they would quickly consume them- 
selves, and devour one another. The proof whereof I saw sufficient- 
ly exampled in these late wars of Munster ; for notwithstanding that 
the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cat- 
tle that you would have thought they should have been able to stand 
long, yet ere one year an^l a half they were brought to such wretch- 
edness as that anv stonv heart would have rued the same. Out of 



fi8 SPENSER. [chap. 

every corner of the woods and glynnes they came creeping forth upon 
their hands, for their legs could not bear them ; they looked like anat- 
omies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves ; they 
did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them, yea and 
one another soon after, insomuch that the very carcases they spared 
not to scrape out of their graves ; and if they found a plot of water- 
cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for a time, yet 
not able long to continue there withal ; that in a short space there 
were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country 
suddenly left void of man and beast ; yet sure in all that war there 
perished not many by the sword, but all by the extremity of famine 
which they themselves had wrought." 

It is hardly surprising that Lord Grey's Secretary should 
share the opinions and the feelings of his master and pa- 
tron. Certainly in his company and service, Spenser learn- 
ed to look upon Ireland and the Irish with the impatience 
and loathing which filled most Englishmen ; and it must 
be added with the same greedy eyes. In this new atmos- 
phere, in which his life was henceforth spent, amid the 
daily talk of ravage and death, the daily scramble for the 
spoils of rebels and traitors, the daily alarms of treachery 
and insurrection, a man naturally learns hardness. Under 
Spenser's imaginative richness, and poetic delicacy of feel- 
ing, there appeared two features. There was a shrewd 
sense of the practical side of things : and there was a full 
share of that sternness of temper which belonged to the 
time. He came to Ireland for no romantic purpose ; he 
came to make his fortune as well as he could : and he ac- 
cepted the conditions of the place and scene, and entered 
at once into the game of adventure and gain which was 
the natural one for all English comers, and of which the 
prizes were lucrative offices and forfeited manors and ab- 
beys. And in the native population and native interests, 
he saw nothing but wliat called forth not merely antipa- 



III.] SPENSER IN IRELAND. fi9 

thy, but deep moral condemnation. It was not merely 
that the Irish were ignorant, thriftless, lilthy, debased, and 
loathsome in their pitiable misery and despair : it was that 
in his view, justice, truth, honesty had utterly perished 
among them, and therefore were not due to them. Of any 
other side to the picture he, like other good Englishmen, 
was entirely unconscious : he saw only on all sides of him 
the empire of barbarism and misrule which valiant and 
godly Englishmen were fighting to vanquish and destroy 
— fighting against apparent but not real odds. And all 
this was aggravated by the stiff adherence of the Irish to 
their old religion. Spenser came over with the common 
opinion of Protestant Englishmen, that they had at least 
in England the pure and undoubted religion of the Bible : 
and in Irchuid, he found himself face to face with the 
very superstition in its lowest foi-ms which he liad so hated 
in England. He left it plotting in England ; he found it 
in armed rebellion in Ireland. Like Lord Grey, he saw in 
Popery the root of all the mischiefs of Ireland ; and his 
sense of true religion, as well as his convictions of right, 
conspired to recommend to him Lord Grey's pitiless gov- 
ernment. The opinion was everywhere — it was undisputed 
and unexamined — that a policy of force, direct or indirect, 
was the natural and right way of reducing diverging re- 
ligions to submission and uniformity : that religious dis- 
agreement ought as a matter of principle to be subdued 
by violence of one degree or another. All wise and good 
men thought so ; all statesmen and rulers acted so. Spenser 
found in Ireland a state of things which seemed to make 
this doctrine the simplest dictate of common sense. 

In August, 1582, Lord Grey left Ireland. He had 
accepted his oflfice with the utmost reluctance, from the 
known want of agreement between the Queen and himself 



70 SPENSER. [chap. 

as to policy. He had executed it in a way which great- 
ly displeased the home Government. And he gave it up, 
with his special work, the extinction of Desmond's rebel- 
lion, still unaccomplished. In spite of the thousands slain, 
and a province made a desert, Desmond was still at large 
and dangerous. Lord Grey had been ruthlessly severe, 
and yet not successful. For mon-ths there had been an 
interchange of angry letters between him and the Govern- 
ment. Burghley, he complains to Walsingham, was " so 
heavy against him." The Queen and Burghley wanted 
order restored, but did not like either the expense of war, 
or the responsibility before other governments for the 
severity which their agents on the spot judged necessary. 
Knowing that he did not please, he had begun to solicit 
his recall before he had been a year in Ireland ; and at 
length he was recalled, not to receive thanks, but to meet 
a strict, if not hostile, inquiry into his administration. Be- 
sides what ha*d been on the surface of his proceedings to 
dissatisfy the Queen, there had been, as in the case of ev- 
ery Deputy, a continued underground stream of backbit- 
ing and insinuation going home against him. Spenser did 
not forget this, when in the Faerie Queene he shadowed 
forth Lord Grey's career in the adventures of Arthegal, the 
great Knight of Justice, met on his return home from his 
triumphs by the hags. Envy and Detraction, and the bray- 
ing of the hundred tongues of the Blatant Beast. Irish 
lords and partisans, calling themselves loyal, when they 
could not get what they wanted, or when he threatened 
them for their insincerity or insolence, at once wrote to 
England. His English colleagues, civil and military, were 
his natural rivals or enemies, ever on the watch to spy out 
and report, if necessary, to misrepresent, what was ques- 
tionable or unfortunate in his ]iroccedings. Permanent 



III.] SPENSER L\ IRELAND. 71 

otficials like Arclibisliop Adam Loftus the Chancellor, or 
Treasurer Wallop, or Secretary Fenton, knew more than 
he did; they corresponded directly with the ministers; 
thev knew that they were expected to keep a strict watch 
on his expenditure ; and they had no scruple to send home 
complaints against him behind his back, as they did against 
one another. A secretary in Dublin like Geoffrey Fenton 
is described as a moth in the garment of every Deputy. 
Grey himself complains of the underhand work; he can- 
not prevent "backbiters' report:" he has found of late 
" very suspicious dealing amongst all his best esteemed as- 
sociates ;" he " dislikes not to be informed of the charges 
against him." In fact, they were accusing him of one of 
the gravest sins of which a Deputy could be guilty ; they 
were writing home that he was lavishing the forfeited 
estates among his favourites, under pretence of rewarding 
service, to the great loss and permanent damage of her 
Majesty's revenue ; and they were forwarding plans for 
commissions to distribute these estates, of which the Dep- 
uty should not be a member. 

He had the common fate of those who accepted great 
responsibilities under the Queen. He was expected to do 
very hard tasks with insufficient means, and to receive 
more blame where he failed than thanks where he suc- 
ceeded. He had every one, English and Irish, against him 
in Ireland, and no one for him in England. He was driven 
to violence because he wanted strength ; he took liberties 
with forfeitures belonging to the Queen because he had no 
other means of rewarding public services. It is not easy 
to feel much sympathy for a man who, brave and public- 
spirited as he was, could think of no remedy for the mis- 
eries of Ireland but wholesale bloodshed. Yet, compared 
with the resident officials who caballed against him, and 



'72 ^ SPENSER. [chap. 

who got rich on these miseries, the Wallops and Fentons 
of the Irish Council, this stern Puritan, so remorseless in 
what he believed to be his duty to his Queen and his 
faith, stands out as an honest and faithful public servant 
of a Government which seemed hardly to know its own 
mind, which vacillated between indulgence and severity, 
and which hampered its officers by contradictory policies, 
ignorant of their difficulties, and incapable of controlling 
the supplies for a costly and w^asteful war. Lord Grey's 
strong hand, though incapable of reaching the real causes 
of Irish evils, undoubtedly saved the country at a moment 
of serious peril, and once more taught lawless Geraldines, 
and Eustaces, and Burkes the terrible lesson of English 
power. The work which he had half done in crushing 
Desmond was soon finished by Desmond's hereditary ri- 
val, Ormond ; and under the milder, but not more popu- 
lar,.rule of his successor, the proud and irritable Sir John 
Perrot, Ireland had for a few years the peace which con- 
sisted in the absence of a definite rebellion, till Tyrone be- 
gan to stir in 1595, and Perrot went back a disgraced man, 
to die a prisoner in the Tower. 

Lord Grey left behind him unappeasable animosities, 
and returned to meet jealous rivals and an ill-satisfied mis- 
tress. But he had left behind one whose admiration and 
reverence he had won, and who was not afraid to take 
care of his reputation. Whether Spenser went back with 
his patron or not in 1582, he was from henceforth mainly 
resident in Ireland. Lord Grey's administration, and the 
principles on which it had been carried on, had made a 
deep impression on Spenser's mind. His first ideal had 
been Philip Sidney, the attractive and all - aQcomplished 

gentleman — ^, ^ ., 

^ ■ ■ - " The President 

Of noblesse and of chevalrie," — 



III.] SPENSER IN IRELAND. '73 

and to the end the pastoral Colin Clout, for he ever re- 
tained his first poetic name, was faithful to his ideal. 
But in the stern Proconsul, under whom he had become 
hardened into a keen and resolute colonist, he had come 
in contact with a new type of character; a governor, un- 
der the sense of duty, doing the roughest of work in the 
roughest of ways. In Lord Grey, he had this character, 
not as he might read of it in books, but acting out its 
qualities in present life, amid the unexpected emergencies, 
the desperate alternatives, the calls for instant decision, 
the pressing necessities and the anxious hazards, of a 
course full of uncertainty and peril, lie had before his 
eyes, day by day, fearless, unshrinking determination, in a 
hateful and most unpromising task. He believed that he 
saw a living example of strength, manliness, and noble- 
ness ; of unsparing and unswerving zeal for order and re- 
ligion, and good government; of single-hearted devotion 
to truth and right, and to the Queen. Lord Grey grew at 
last, in the poet's imagination, into the image and repre- 
sentative of perfect and masculine justice. When Spenser 
began to enshrine in a great allegory his ideas of human 
life and character. Lord Grey supplied the moral feature^, 
and almost the name, of one of its chief heroes. Spenser 
did more than embody his memory in poetical allegories. 
In Spenser's View of the present State of Ireland, written 
some years after Lord Grey's death, he gives his mature, 
and then, at any rate, disinterested approbation of Lord 
Grey's administration^ and his opinion of the causes of its 
failure. He kindles into indignation when "most untruely 
and maliciously, those evil tongues backbite and slander the 
sacred ashes of that most just and honourable personage, 
whose least virtue, of many most excellent, which abounded 
in his horoical spirit, they were never able to aspire unto." 
F 4* 



74 SPENSER. [chap. 

Lord Grey's patronage had brought Spenser into the 
public service ; perhaps that patronage, the patronage of 
a man who had powerful enemies, was the cause that 
Spenser's preferments, after Lord Grey's recall, were on so 
moderate a scale. The notices which we glean from in- 
direct sources about Spenser's employment in Ireland are 
meagre enough, but they are distinct. They show him as 
a subordinate public servant, of no great account, but yet, 
like other public servants in L'eland, profiting, in his de- 
gree, by the opportunities of the time. In the spring fol- 
lowing Lord Grey's arrival (March 22, 1581), Spenser was 
appointed Clerk of Decrees and Recognizances in the Irish 
Court of Chancery, retaining his place as Secretary to the 
Lord-Deputy, in which character his signature sometimes 
appears in the Irish Records, certifying State documents 
sent to England. This office is said by Fuller to have 
been a "lucrative" one. In the same year he received 
a lease of the Abbey and Manor of Enniscorthy, in the 
County of Wexford. Enniscorthy was an important post 
in the network of English garrisons, on one of the roads 
from Dublin to the South. He held it but for a short 
time. It was transferred by hiin to a citizen of Wexford, 
Richard Synot, an agent, apparently, of the powerful Sir 
Henry Wallop, the Treasurer; and it was soon after trans- 
ferred bv Synot to his patron, an official who secured to 
himself a large share of the spoils of Desmond's rebellion. 
Further, Spenser's name appears, in a list of persons (Jan- 
uary, 1582), among whom Lord Grey had distributed some 
of the forfeited property of the rebels — a list sent home 
by him in answer to charges of waste and damage to the 
Queen's revenue, busily urged against him in Ireland by 
men like W^allop and Fenton, and readily listened to by 
English ministers like Burghley, who complained that Ire- 



m.] SPENSER IX IRELAND. 75 

/land was a " gulf of consuiniiig treasure.'" The grant was 
' mostly to persons active in service, among others one to 
Wallop himself; and a certain number of smaller value 
to persons of Lord Grey's own household. There, among 
yeomen ushers, gentlemen ushers, gentlemen serving the 
Lord-Deputy, and Welshmen and Irishmen with uncouth 
names, to whom small gratificatiojis had been allotted out 
of the spoil, we read — "the lease of a house in Dublin be- 
longing to [Lord] Baltinglas for six years to come to Ed- 
mund Spenser, one of the Lord-Deputy's Secretaries, val- 
ued at 5/." . . . " of a ' custodiam ' of John Eustace's [one 
of Baltinglas' family] land of the Newland to Edmund 
Spenser, one of the Lord-Deputy's Secretaries." In July, 
1586, when every one was full of the project for "plant- 
ing" Munster, he was still in Dublin, for he addresses 
from thence a sonnet to Gabriel Harvey. In March, 158f, 
we find the following, in a list of officers on the establish- 
ment of the province of Munster, which the government 
was endeavouring to colonize from the west of England : 
" Lodovick Briskett, clerk to the council (at 20/. per an- 
num), 13/. 6s. 8d. (this 'is exercised by one Spenser, as dep- 
uty fgr the said Briskett, to whom {i. e., Briskett) it was 
granted by patent 6 Nov. 25 Eliz. (1583)." (Careiv MSS.) 
Bryskett was a man much employed in Irish business. He 
had been Clerk to the Irish Council, had been a correspond- 
ent of Burghley and AValsingham, and had aspired to be 
Secretary of State when Fenton obtained the poet : possi- 
bly in disappointment, he had retired, with an oflBce which 
he exercised by deputy, to his lands in Wexford. He was 
a poet, and a friend of Spenser's : and it may have been 
by his interest with the dispensers of patronage, that " one 
Spenser," who had been his deputy, succeeded to his office. 
In this position Spenser was brought into communica- 



76 SPENSER. [chap. 

tion with the powerful English chiefs on the Council of 
Munster, and also with the leading men among the Under- 
takers, as they were called, among whom more than half a 
million of acres of the escheated and desolate lands of the 
fallen Desmond were to be divided, on condition of each 
Undertaker settling on his estate a proportionate number 
of English gentlemen, yeomen, artisans and labourers with 
their families, who were to "bring the ruined province into 
order and cultivation. The President and Vice-President 
of the Council were the two Norreys, John and Thomas, 
two of the most gallant of a gallant family. The project 
for the planting of Munster had been originally started be- 
fore the rebellion, in 1568. It had been one of the causes 
of the rebellion ; but now that Desmond was'fallen, it was 
revived. It had been received in England with favour and 
hope. Men of inliuence and enterprise, Sir Christopher 
Hatton, Walsingham, Walter Ralegh, had embarked in it; 
and the government had made an appeal to the English 
country gentlemen to take advantage of this new opening 
for their younger sons, and to send them over at the head 
of colonies from the families of their tenants and depend- 
ants, to occupy a rich and beautiful land on easy terrtis of 
rent. In the Western Counties, north and south, the ap- 
peal had awakened interest. In the list of Undertakers 
are found Cheshire and Lancashire names — Stanley, Fleet- 
wood, Molyneux : and a still larger number for Somerset, 
Devon, and Dorset — Popham, Rogers, Coles, Ralegh, Chud- 
leigh, Champernown. The plan of settlement was care- 
fully and methodically traced out. The province was sur- 
veyed as well as it could be under great difficulties. Maps 
were made which Lord Burghley annotated. " Seigniories " 
were created of varying size, 12,000, 8000, 6000, 4000 
acres, with corresponding obligations as to the number 



111.] SPENSER IN IRELAND. 77 

and class of farms and inhabitants in each. Legal science 
in England was to protect titles by lengthy patents and 
leases; administrative watchfulness and firmness were to 
secure them in Ireland. Privileges of trade were granted to 
the Undertakers : they were even allowed to transport coin 
out of England to Ireland : and a long respite was granted 
them before the Crown was to claim its rents. Strict rules 
were laid down to keep the native Irish out of the English 
lands and from intermarrying with the English families. 
In this partition, Seigniories were distributed by the Under- 
takers among themselves with the free carelessness of men 
dividing the spoil. The great people, like Hatton and 
Ralegh, were to have their two or three Seigniories : the 
County of Cork, with its nineteen Seigniories, is assigned to 
the gentlemen undertakers from Somersetshire. The plan 
was an ambitious and tempting one. But difficulties soon 
arose. The gentlemen undertakers were not in a hurry 
to leave England, even on a visit to their desolate and 
dangerous seigniories in Munster. The " planting " did 
not thrive. The Irish were inexhaustible in raising legal 
obstacles and in giving practical annoyance. Claims and 
titles were hard to discover or to extinguish. Even the 
very attainted and escheated lands were challenged by vir- 
tue of settlements made before the attainders. The result 
was that a certain number of Irish estates were added to 
the possessions of a certain number of English families. 
But Munster was not planted. Burghley's policy, and 
Walsingham's resolution, and Ralegh's daring inventive- 
ness were alike baffled by the conditions of a problem 
harder than the peopling of America or the conquest of 
India. Munster could not be made English. After all its 
desolation, it reverted in the main to its Irish possessors. 
Of all the schemes and efforts which accompanied the 



78 SPENSER. [chap. 

attempt, and the records of which fill the Irish State pa- 
pers of those years, Spenser was the near and close spec- 
tator. He was in Dublin and on the spot, as Clerk of the 
Council of Munster. And he had become acquainted, per- 
haps, by this time, had formed a friendship, with Walter 
Ralegh, one of the most active men in Irish business, 
whose influence was rising wherever he was becoming 
known. Most of the knowledge which Spenser thus 
gathered, and of the impressions which a practical hand- 
ling of Irish affairs had left on him, was embodied in his 
interesting work, written several years later — A View of 
the present State of Ireland. But his connexion with 
Munster not unnaturally brought him also an accession of 
fortune. When Ralegh and the " Somersetshire men " 
were dividing among them the County of Cork, the Clerk 
of the Council was remembered by some of his friends. 
He was admitted among the Undertakers. His name ap- 
pears in the list, among great statesmen and captains with 
their seignories of 12,000 acres, as holding a grant of 
some 3000. It was the manor and castle of Kilcolman, a 
h'uined house of the Desmonds, under the Galtee Hills. It 
appears to have been first assigned to another person.* 
But it came at last into Spenser's hands, probably in 
1586; and henceforward this was his abode and his home. 
Kilcolman Castle was near the high-road between Mal- 
low and Limerick, about three miles from Buttevant and 
Doneraile, in a plain at the foot of the last western falls 
of the Galtee range, watered by a stream now called the 
Awbeg, but which he celebrates under the name of the 
Mulla. In Spenser's time it was probably surrounded with 
woods. The earlier writers describe it as a pleasant abode 

1 Carew MSS. Calendar, 1587, p. 449. Cf. Irish Papers ; Calendar, 
ISSY.p. 309, 450. 



.n.J 



SPENSER IN IRELAND. 79 



with tine views, and so Spenser celebrated its natural beau- 
ties. The more recent accounts are not so favourable. 
" Kilcolman," says the writer in Murray's Handbook, " is 
a small peel tower, with cramped and dark rooms, a form 
which every gentleman's house assumed in turbulent times. 
It is situated on the margin of a small lake, and, it must 
be confessed, overlooking an extremely dreary tract of 
country." It was in the immediate neighbourhood of the 
wild country to the north, half forest, half bog, the wood 
and hill of Aharlo, or Arlo, as Spenser writes it, which was 
the refuge and the "great fastness" of the Desmond re- 
bellion. It was amid such scenes, amid such occupations, 
in such society and companionship, that the poet of the 
Faerie Queene accomplished as much of his work as was 
given him to do. In one of his later poems, he thus con- 
trasts the peace of England with his own home : 

" No wayling there nor wretchednesse is heard, 
No bloodie issues nor no leprosies, 
No griesly famine, nor no raging sweard, 

No nightly bordrags [= border ravage], nor no hue and cries ; 
The shepheards there abroad may safely lie, 
On hills and downes, withouten dread or daunger : 
No ravenous wolves the good mans hope destroy, 
Nor outlawes fell affray the forest raunger." 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FAERIE QUEENE THE FIRST PART. 

[1580-1590.] 

The Faerie Queene is heard of very early in Spenser's lit- 
erary course. We know that in the beginning- of 1580, 
the year in which Spenser went to Ireland, something un- 
der that title had been already begun and submitted to Ga- 
briel Harvey's judgment ; and that, among other literary 
projects, Spenser was intending to proceed with it. But 
beyond the mere name, we know nothing, at this time, of 
Spenser's proposed Faerie Queene. Harvey's criticisms 
on it tell us nothing of its general plan or its numbers. 
Whether the first sketch had been decided upon, whether 
the new stanza, Spenser's original creation, and its peculiar 
beauty and instrument, had yet been invented by him, 
while he had been trying experiments in metre in the 
Shepherd's Calendar^ we have no means of determining. 
But he took the idea with him to Ireland ; and in Ireland 
he pursued it and carried it out. 

The first authentic account which we have of the com- 
position of the Faerie Queene is in a pamphlet written 
by Spenser's friend and predecessor in the service of the 
Council of Munster, Ludowick Bryskett, and inscribed to 
Lord Grey of Wilton : a Discourse of Civil Life^ publish- 
ed in 1606. He describes a meetino; of friends at his cot- 



CHAP. IT.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 81 

tage near Dublin, and a conversation that took place on 
the " ethical " part of moral philosophy. The company 
consisted of some of the principal Englishmen employed 
in Irish affairs, men whose names occur contmually in the 
copious correspondence in the Rolls and at Lambeth. 
There was Lons:, the Primate of Armao-h : there were Sir 
Robert Dillon, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, 
and Dormer, the Queen's Solicitor ; and there were sol- 
diers, like Thomas Norreys, then Vice-President of Mun- 
ster, under his brother, John Norreys ; Sir Warham Sent- 
leger, on whom had fallen so much of the work in the 
South of Ireland, and who at last, like Thomas Norreys, 
fell in Tyrone's rebellion ; Captain Christopher Carleil, 
Walsingham's son-in-law, a man who had gained great 
distinction on land and sea, not only in Ireland, but in the 
Low Countries, in France, and at Carthagena and San Do- 
mingo; and Captain Nicholas Dawtry, the Seneschal of 
Clandeboy, in the troublesome Ulster country, afterwards 
" Captain " of Hampshire at the time of the Armada. It 
was a remarkable party. The date of this meeting must 
have been after the summer of 1584, at which time Long- 
was made Primate, and before the beginning of 1588, 
when Dawtry was in Hampshire. The extract is so curi- 
ous, as a picture of the intellectual and literary wants and 
efforts of the times, especially amid the disorders of Ire- 
land, and as a statement of Spenser's purpose in his poem, 
that an extract from it deserves to be inserted, as it is given 
in Mr. Todd's Life of Spenser, and repeated in that by Mr. 
Hales. 

" Herein do I greatly envie," writes Bryskett, " the happiness of 
the Italians, who have in their mother-tongue late writers that have, 
with a singular easie method taught all that Plato and Aristotle h&ve 



82 SPENSER. [chap. 

confusedly or obscurely left written. Of which, some I have begun 
to reade with no small delight ; as Alexander Piccolomini, Gio. Bap- 
tista Giraldi, and Guazzo ; all three having written upon the Ethick 
part of Morall Philosophic both exactly and perspicuously. And 
would God that some of our countrimen would shew themselves so 
wel affected to the good of their countrie (whereof one principall and 
most important part consisteth in the instructing men to vertue), as 
to set downe in Enghsh the precepts of those parts of Morall Philos- 
ophic, whereby our youth might, without spending so much time as 
the learning of those other languages require, speedily enter into the 
right course of vertuous life. 

"In the meane while I must struggle with those bookes which I 
vnderstand and content myselfe to plod upon them, in hope that God 
(who knoweth the sincerenesse of my desire) will be pleased to open 
my vnderstanding, so as I may reape that profit of my reading, which 
I trauell for. Yet is there a gentleman in this company, whom I have 
had often a purpose to intreate, that as his liesure might serue him, 
he would vouchsafe to spend some time with me to instruct me in 
some hard points which I cannot of myselfe vnderstand ; knowing him 
to he not onely perfect in the Greek tongue, hut also very well read in Phi- 
losophic, both morall and naturall. Neuertheless such is my bashf ul- 
ness, as I neuer yet durst open my mouth to disclose this my desire 
unto him, though I have not wanted some hartning thereunto from 
himselfe. For of loue and kindnes to me, he encouraged me long sith- 
€718 to follow tlie reading of the Greeke tongue, and offered me his helpe 
to make me vnderstand it. But now that so good an opportunitie is 
offered vnto me, to satisfie in some sort my desire ; I thinke I should 
commit a great fault, not to myselfe alone, but to all this company, if 
I should not enter my request thus farre, as to moue him to spend 
this time which we have now destined to familiar discourse and 
conuersation, in declaring unto us the great benefits which men ob- 
taine by the knowledge of Morall Philosophic, and in making us to 
know what the same is, what be the parts thereof, whereby vertues 
are to be distinguished from vices ; and finally, that he will be pleased 
to run ouer in such order as he shall thinke good, such and so many 
principles and rules thereof, as shall serue not only for my better in- 
struction, but also for the contentment and satisfaction of you al. 
For I nothing doubt, but that cucry one of you will be glad to heare 



IV.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST FART. 83 

so profitable a discourse and thirike the time very wel spent wher- 
in so excellent a knowledge shal be reuealed unto you, from which 
euery one may be assured to gather some fruit as wel as myselfe. 

" Therefore (said I), turning myselfe to M. Spenser^ It is you, sir, to 
whom it pertaineth to shew yourselfe courteous now unto vs all and 
to make vs all beholding unto you for the pleasure and profit which 
we shall gather from your speeches, if you shall vouchsafe to open 
unto vs the goodly cabinet, in which this excellent treasure of vertues 
lieth locked up from the vulgar sort. And thereof in the behalfe of 
all as for myselfe, I do most earnestly intreate you not to say vs nay. 
Vnto which wordes of mine euery man applauding most with like 
words of request, and the rest with gesture and countenances ex- 
pressing as much, M. Spenser answered in this maner : 

" ' Though it may seeme hard for me, to refuse the request made by 
you all, whom euery one alone, I should for many respects be willing 
to gratifie ; yet as the case standeth, I doubt not but with the con- 
sent of the most part of you, I shall be excused at this time of this 
taske which would be laid vpon me ; for sure I am, tha,t it is not vn- 
knowne vnto you, that I haue alreedy vndertaken a work tending to 
the same effect, which is in hei'oical verse under the title of a Faerie 
Qiieene to represent all the moral vertues, assigning to euery vertue 
a Knight to be the patron and defender of the same, in whose actions | 
and feates of arms and chiualry the operations of that vertue, where- I 
of he is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly \ 
appetites that oppose themselves against the same, to be beaten down> 
and ouercome. Which work, as I have already well entred into, if 
God shall please to spare me life that I may finish it according to 
my mind, your wish (J/. Bryskett) will be in some sort accomplished, 
though perhaps not so effectually as you could desire. And the same 
may very well serue for my excuse, if at this time I eraue to be for- 
borne in this your request, since any discourse, that I might make 
thus on the sudden in such a subject would be but simple, and little 
to your satisfactions. For it would require good aduisement and 
premeditation for any man to vndertake the declaration of these 
points that you have proposed, containing in effect the Ethicke part 
of Morall Philosophic. Whereof since I haue taken in hand to dis- 
course at large in my poeme before spoken, I hope the expectation 
u<^ that work may serue to free me at this time from speaking in that 



^4 SPENSER. [chap. 

matter, notwithstanding your motion and all your intreaties. But I 
will tell you how I thinke by himsclfe he may very well excuse my 
speech, and yet satisfie all you in this matter. I haue seene (as he 
knoweth) a translation made by himselfe out of the Italian tongue of 
a dialogue comprehending all the Ethick part of Moral Philosophy 
written by one of those three he formerly mentioned, and that is by 
Giraldi vnder the title of a Dialogue of Ciuil life. If it please him 
to bring us forth that translation to be here read among vs, or oth- 
erwise to deliuer to us, as his memory may serue him, the contents 
of the same ; he shal (I warrant you) satisfie you all at the ful, and 
himselfe wil haue no cause but to thinke the time well spent in re- 
uiewing his labors, especially in the company of so many his friends, 
who may thereby reape much profit, and the translation happily fare 
the better by some mending it may receiue in the perusing, as all 
writings else may do by the often examination of the same. Neither 
let it trouble him that I so turne ouer to him againe the taske he 
wold haue put me to ; for it falleth out fit for him to verifie the prin- 
cipall of all this Apologie, euen now made for himselfe ; because there- 
by it will appeare that he hath not withdrawne himselfe from seruice 
of the state to Hue idle or wholly priuate to himselfe, but hath spent 
some time in doing that which may greatly benefit others, and hath 
serued not a httle to the bettering of his owne mind, and increasing 
of his knowledge ; though he for modesty pretend much ignorance, 
and pleade Avant in wealth, much like some rich beggars, who either 
of custom, or for couetousnes, go to begge of others those things 
whereof they haue no want at home.' 

" With this answer of M. Spemers it seemed that all the company 
were wel satisfied, for after some few speeches whereby they had 
shewed an extreme longing after his worke of the Fairie Queene, 
^vhereof some parcels had been by some of them see?i€, they all began to 
presse me to produce my translation mentioned by M. Spemer that it 
might be perused among them; or else that I should (as near as I 
could) deliuer unto them the contents of the same, supposing that 
my memory would not much faile me in a thing so studied and ad- 
visedly set downe in writing as a translation must be." 

A poet at this time still had to justify his employ- 
ment by presenting himself in the character of a professed 



IT.] THE FAERIE QUEEXE— THE FIRST PART. 85 

teacher of morality, with a purpose as definite and formaL 
though with a different method, as the preacher in the 
pulpit. Even with this profession, he had to encounter 
many prejudices, and men of gravity and wisdom shook 
their heads at what they thought his idle trifling. But if 
he wished to be counted respectable, and to separate him- 
self from the crowd of foolish or licentious rimers, he 
must intend distinctly, not merely to interest, but to in- 
struct, by his new and deep conceits. It was under the 
influence of this persuasion that Spenser laid down the 
plan of the Faerie Queene. It was, so he proposed to 
himself, to be a work on moral, and, if time were given 
him, political philosophy, composed with as serious a di- 
dactic aim, as any treatise or sermon in prose. He deems 
it necessary to explain and excuse his work by claiming 
for it this design. He did not venture to send the Faerie 
Queene into the world without also telling the world its 
moral meaning and bearing. He cannot trust it to tell 
its own story or suggest its real drift. In the letter to 
Sir W. Ralegh, accompanying the first portion of it, he 
unfolds elaborately the sense of his allegory, as he ex- 
pounded it to his friends in Dublin. "To some," he says, 
" I know this method will seem displeasant, which had 
rather have good discipline delivered plainly by w^ay of 
precept, or sermoned at large, as they use, than thus cloud- 
ily enwrapped in allegorical devises." He thought that 
Homer and Virgil and Ariosto had thus written poetry, 
to teach the world moral virtue and political wisdom. 
He attempted to propitiate Lord Burghley, who hated 
him and his verses, by setting before him in a dedication 
sonnet, the true intent of his — 

" Idle rimes ; 
The labour of lost time and wit unstaid ; ' 



8(; SPENSER. [CHA1-. 

Yet if their deeper sense he inly weighed, 
And the dim veil, with which from common view 
Their fairer parts are hid, aside be laid, 
Perhaps not vain they may appear to you." 

In earlier and in later times, men do not apologize for 
being poets ; and Spenser himself was deceived in giving 
himself credit for this direct pm-pose to instruct, when he 
was really following the course marked out by his gen- 
ius. But he only conformed to the curious utilitarian 
spirit which pervaded the literature of the time. Read- 
ers were supposed to look everywhere for a moral to be 
drawn, or a lesson to be inculcated, or some practical rules 
to be avowedly and definitely deduced ; and they could 
not yet take in the idea that the exercise of the specula- 
tive and imaginative faculties may be its own end, and 
may have indirect influences and utilities even greater 
than if it was guided by a conscious intention to be edi- 
fying and instructive. 

The first great English poem of modern times, the first 
creation of English imaginative power since Chaucer, and 
like Chaucer so thoroughly and characteristically English, 
was not written in England. Whatever Spenser may have 
done to it before he left England with Lord Grey, and 
whatever portions of earlier composition may have been 
used and worked up into the poem as it went on, the 
bulk of the Faerie Queene, as we have it, was composed 
in what to Spenser and his friends was almost a foreign 
land — in the conquered and desolated wastes of wild and 
barbarous Ireland. It is a feature of his work on which 
Spenser himself dwells. In the verses which usher in his 
poem, addressed to the great men of Elizabeth's court, he 
presents his work to the Earl of Ormond, as 



IV.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 87 

" The wild fruit which salvage soil hath bred ; 
Which being through long wars left almost waste, 
With brutish barbarism is overspread ;" — 

and in the same strain to Lord Grey, he speaks of his 
" rude rimes, the which a rustic muse did weave, in salvage 
soil." It is idle to speculate w^hat diJfference of form the 
Faerie Queene might have received, if the design had been 
carried out in the peace of England and in the society of 
London. But it is certain that the scene of trouble and/" 
danger in which it grew up greatly ♦affected it. This may 
possibly account, though it is questionable, for the loose- 
ness of texture, and the want of accuracy and finish which 
is sometimes to be seen in it. Spenser was a learned 
poet; and his poem has the character of the work of a 
man of xyide reading, but without books to verify or cor- 
rect. It cannot be doubted that his life in Ireland added 
to the force and vividness with which Spenser wrote. In 
Ireland, he had before his eyes continually the dreary 
world which the poet of knight-errantry imagines. There 
men might in good truth travel long through wildernesses 
and " great woods " given over to the outlaw and the 
niffian. There the avenger of wrong need seldom want 
for perilous adventure and the occasion for quelling the 
oppressor. There the armed and unrelenting hand of 
right was but too truly the only substitute for law. There 
might be found in most certain and prosaic reality, the 
ambushes, the disguises, the treacheries, the deceits and 
temptations, even the supposed witchcrafts and enchant- 
ments, against which the fairy champions of the virtues 
have to be on their guard. In Ireland, Englishmen saw, 
or at any rate thought they saw, a universal conspiracy of 
fraud against righteousness, a universal battle going on be- 
tween error and religion, between justice and the most in- 



88 SPENSER. [chap. 

Solent selfishness. They found there every type of what 
was cruel, brutal, loathsome. They saw everywhere men 
whose business it was to betray and destroy, women whose 
business it was to tempt and ensnare and corrrupt. They 
thought that they saw too, in those who waged the Queen's 
wars, all forms of manly and devoted gallantry, of noble 
generosity, of gentle strength, of knightly sweetness and 
courtesy. There were those, too, who failed in the hour 
of trial ; who were the victims of temptation or of the 
victorious strength of evil. Besides the open or concealed 
traitors — the Desmonds, and Kildares, and O'Neales — 
there were the men who were entrapped and overcome, and 
the men who disappointed hopes, and became recreants to 
their faith and loyalty ; like Sir William Stanley, who, 
after a brilliant career in Ireland, turned traitor and apos- 
tate, and gave up Deventer and his Irish bands to the 
King of Spain. 
y The realities of the Irish wars and of Irish social and 
political life gave a real subject, gave body and form to 
the allegory. There in actual flesh and blood were ene- 
mies to be fought with by the good and true. There in 
visible fact were the vices and falsehoods, which Arthur 
and his companions were to quell and punish. There 
in living truth were Sansfo^, smd Sansloi/, and Sansjoy ; 
there were Orgoglio and Grantorto, the witcheries of 
Acrasia and Phwdria, the insolence of Briana and Crudor. 
And there, too, were real Knights of goodness and the 
Gospel — Grey, and Ormond, and Ralegh, the Norreyses, 
St. Leger, and Maltby — on a real mission from Gloriana's 
noble realm to destroy the enemies of truth and virtue. 

The allegory bodies forth the trials which beset the life 
of man in all conditions and at all times. But Spenser 
could never have seen in England such a strong and per- 



IV.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 80 

feet image of the allegory itself — with the wild wander- 
ings of its personages, its daily chances of battle and dan- 
ger, its hairbreadth escapes, its strange encounters, its pre- 
vailing anarchy and violence, its normal absence of order 
and law — as he had continually and customarily before 
him in Ireland. " The curse of God was so great," writes 
John Hooker, a contemporary, " and the land so barren 
both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from one 
end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to 
Smerwick, about six-score miles, he should not meet man, 
woman, or child, saving in cities or towns, nor yet see any 
beast, save foxes, wolves, or other ravening beasts." It is 
the desolation through which Spenser's knights pursue 
their solitary way, or join company as they can. Indeed, 
to read the same writer s account, for instance, of Ralegh's 
adventures with the Irish chieftains, his challenges and 
single combats, his escapes at fords and woods, is like read- 
ing bits of the Faerie Queene in prose. As Spenser chose 
to write of knight-errantry, his picture of it has doubtless 
gained in truth and strength by his very practical expe- 
rience of what such life as he describes must be. The 
Faerie Queene might almost be called the Epic of the Eng- 
lish wars in Ireland under Elizabeth, as much as the Epic 
of English virtue and valour at the same period. 

At the Dublin meeting described by Bryskett, some 
time later than 1584, Spenser had already "well entered 
into" his work. In 1589, he came to England, bringing 
with him the first three books; and early in 1590, they 
were published. Spenser himself has told us the story of 
this first appearance of the Faerie Queene. The person 
who discovered the extraordinary work of genius which 
was growing up amid the turbulence and misery and de- 
spair of Ireland, and who once more brought its author 
G 5 



90 SPENSER. [chap. 

into the centre of English life, was Walter Ralegh. Ralegh 
had served through much of the Munster war. He had 
shown in Ireland some of the characteristic points of his 
nature, which made him at once the glory and shame of 
English manhood. He had begun to take a prominent 
place in any business in which he engaged. He had 
shown his audacity, his self-reliance, his resource, and some 
signs of that boundless but prudent ambition which mark- 
ed his career. He had shown that freedom of tongue, that 
restless and high-reaching inventiveness, and that tenacity 
of opinion, which made him a difficult person for others 
to work with. Like so many of the English captains, he 
hated Ormond, and saw in his feud with the Desmonds 
the real cause of the hopeless disorder of Munster. But 
also he incurred the displeasure and suspicion of Lord 
Grey, who equally disliked the great Irish Chief, but who 
saw in the " plot " which Ralegh sent to Burghley for the 
pacification of Munster. an adventurer's impracticable and 
self-seeking scheme. "1 must be plain," he writes, " I 
like neither his carriage nor his company." Ralegh had 
been at Smerwick : he had been in command of one of 
the bands put in by Lord Grey to do the execution. On 
Lord Grey's departure he had become one of the leading 
persons arnong the undertakers for the planting of Mun- 
ster. He had secured for himself a large share of the 
Desmond lands. In 1587, an agreement among the un- 
dertakers assigned to Sir Walter Ralegh, his associates and 
tenants, three seigniories of 12,000 acres apiece, and one 
of 6000, in Cork and Waterford. But before Lord Grey's 
departure Ralegh had left Ireland, and had found the true 
field for his ambition in the English court. From 1582 
to 1589 he had shared with Leicester and Hatton, and 
afterwards with Essex, the special favour of the Queen. 



IV. J THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 01 

He had become Warden of the Stannaries and Captain of 
the Guard. He had undertaken the adventure of found- 
ing a new realm in America under the name of Virginia. 
He had obtained grants of monopolies, farms of wines, 
Babington's forfeited estates. His own great ship, which 
he had built, the Ark Ralegh, had carried the flag of the 
High Admiral of England in the glorious but terrible sum- 
mer of 1588. He joined in that tremendous sea-ch*ase 
from Plymouth to the North Sea, when, as Spenser wrote 
to Lord Howard of Effingham — 

" Those huge castles of Castilian King, 
That vainly threatened kingdoms to displace, 
Like flying doves, ye did before you chase." 

In the summer of 1589, Ralegh had been busy, as men 
of the sea were then, half Queen's servants, half bucca- 
neers, in gathering the abundant spoils to be found on the 
high seas ; and he had been with Sir John Norreys and 
Sir Francis Drake in a bootless but not unprofitable expe- 
dition to Lisbon. On his return from the Portugal voyage 
his court fortunes underwent a change. Essex, who had 
long scorned "that knave Ralegh," was in the ascendant. 
Ralegh found the Queen, for some reason or another, and 
reasons were not hard to find, offended and dangerous. 
He bent before the storm. In the end of the summer of 
1589, he was in Ireland, looking after his large seigniories, 
his lawsuits with the old proprietors, his castle at Lismore, 
and his schemes for turning to account his woods for 
the manufacture of pipe staves for the French and Spanish 
wine trade. 

He visited Spenser, who was his neighbour, at Kilcol- 
nian, and the visit led to important consequences. The 
record of it and of the events which followed is preserved 



92 SPENSER. [chap. 

in a carious poem of Spenser's written two or three years 
later, and of much interest in regard to Spenser's personal 
history. Taking up the old pastoral form of the Shep- 
herd's Calendar, with the familiar rustic names of the 
swains who figured in its dialogues — Hobbinol, Cuddie, 
Rosalind, and his own Colin Clout — he described, under 
the usual poetical disguise, the circumstances which once 
more took him back from Ireland to the court. The court 
was the place to which all persons wishing to push their 
way in the world were attracted. It was not only the 
centre of all power, the source of favours and honours, the 
seat of all that swayed the destiny of the nation. It was 
the home of refinement, and wit, and cultivation ; the place 
where eminence of all kinds was supposed to be collected, 
and to which all ambitions, literary as much as political, 
aspired. It was not only a royal court; it was also a 
great club. Spenser's poem shows us how he had sped 
there, and the impressions made on his mind by a closer 
view of the persons and the ways of that awful and daz- 
zling scene, which exercised such a spell upon Englishmen, 
and which seemed to combine or concentrate in itself the 
glory and the goodness of heaven, and all the baseness and 
malignity of earth. The occasion deserved a full celebra- 
tion ; it was indeed a turning-point in his life, for it led to 
the publication of the Faerie Qiieene, and to the immediate 
and enthusiastic recognition by the Englishmen of the time 
of his unrivalled pre-eminence as a poet. In this poetical 
record, Colin Clout's come home again, containing in it 
history, criticism, satire, personal recollections, love pas- 
sages, we have the picture of his recollections of the flush 
and excitement of those months which saw the first ap- 
pearance of the Faerie Queene. He describes the inter- 
ruption of his retired and, as he paints it, peaceful and 



5V.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 93 

pastoral life in his Irish home, by the appearance of Ra- 
legh, the " Shepherd of the Ocean," from " the main sea 
deep." They may have been thrown together before. 
Both had been patronized by Leicester. Both had been 
together at Smerwick, and probably in other passages of 
the Munster war ; both had served under Lord Grey, Spen- 
ser's master, though he had been no lover of Ralegh. In 
their different degrees, Ralegh with his two or three seign- 
iories of half a county, and Spenser with his more mod- 
est estate, they were embarked in the same enterprise, the 
plantation of Munster. But Ralegh now appeared before 
Spenser in all the glory of a brilliant favourite — the soldier, 
the explorer, the daring sea-captain, the founder of planta- 
tions across the ocean, and withal, the poet, the ready and 
eloquent discourser, the true judge and measurer of what 
was great or beautiful. 

The time, too, was one at once of excitement and repose. 
Men felt as they feel after a great peril, a great effort, a 
great relief; as the Greeks did after Salamis and Platsea, 
as our fathers did after Waterloo. In the struggle in the 
Channel with the might of Spain, England had recognized 
its force and its prospects. One of those solemn moments 
had just passed when men see before them the course of 
the world turned one way, when it might have been tunied 
another. All the world had been looking out to see what 
would come to pass ; and nowhere more eagerly than in 
Ireland. Every one, English and Irish alike, stood agaze 
to " see how the game would be played." The great fleet, 
as it drew near, " worked wonderfully uncertain yet calm 
humours in the people, not daring to disclose their real in- 
tention." When all was decided, and the distressed ships 
were cast away on the western coast, the Irish showed as 
much zeal as the English in fulfillincj the orders of the 



^4 SPENSER. LcHAf. 

Irish council, to " apprehend and execute all Spaniards 
found there of what quality soever." These were the im- 
pressions under which the two men met. Ralegh, at the 
moment, was under a cloud. In the poetical fancy picture 
set before us — 

" His song was all a lamentable lay 
Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard, 
Of Cynthia the Ladie of the Sea, 
Which from her presence faultlesse him debard. 
And ever and anon, with singults rife. 
He cryed out, to make his undersong; 
Ah ! my loves queene, and goddesse of my life, 
Who shall me pittie, when thou doest me wrong ?" 

At Kilcolraan, Ralegh became acquainted with what 
Spenser had done of the Faerie Queene. His rapid and 
clear judgment showed him how immeasurably it rose 
above all that had yet been produced under the name of 
poetry in England. That alone is sufficient to account 
for his eager desire that it should be known in England. 
But Ralegh always liad an eye to his own affairs, marred 
as they so often were by ill-fortune and his own mistakes ; 
and he may have thought of making his peace with Cyn- 
thia by reintroducing at Court the friend of Philip Sidney, 
now ripened into a poet not unworthy of Gloriana's great- 
ness. This is Colin Clout's account : 



' When thus our pipes we both had wearied well, 
(Quoth he) and each an end of singing made, 
He gan to cast great lyking to my lore. 
And great dislyking to my lucklesse lot. 
That banisht had my selfe, like wight forlore. 
Into that waste, where I was quite forgot. 
The which to leave, thenceforth he counseld mee, 
Unmeet for man, in whom was aught regardfull. 



,v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 95 

And wend with him, his Cynthia to see : 

Whose grace was great, and bounty most rewardfull ; 

Besides her peerlesse skill in making well, 

And all the ornaments of wondrous wit, 

Such as all womankynd did far excell. 

Such as the world admyr'd, and praised it. 

So what with hope of good, and hate of ill, 

He me perswaded forth with him to fare. 

Nought tooke I with me, but mine oaten quill : 

Small needments else need shepheard to prepare. 

So to the sea we came ; the sea, that is 

A world of waters heaped up on hie, 

Rolling like mountaines in wide wildernesse, 

Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse crie." 

This is followed by a spirited description of a sea-voy- 
age, and of that empire of the seas in which, since the 
overthrow of the Armada, England and England's mis- 
tress were now claiming to be supreme, and of which 
Ralegh was one of the most active and distinguished 
officers : 

" And yet as ghastly dreadfull, as it seemes, 
Bold men, presuming life for gaine to sell, 
Dare tempt that gulf, and in those wandring stremes 
Seek waies unknowne, waies leading down to hell. 
For, as we stood there waiting on the strond, 
Behold ! an huge great vessell to us came, 
Dauncing upon the waters back to lond, 
As if it scornd the daunger of the same ; 
Yet was it but a wooden frame and fraile, 
Glewed togither with some subtile matter. 
Yet had it armes and wings, and head and taile, 
And life to move it selfe upon the water. 
Strange thing ! how bold and swift the monster was, 
That neither car'd for wind, nor haile, nor raine, 
Nor swelling waves, but thorough them did passe 
So proudly, that she made them roare againe. 



96 SPENSER. [chap. 

The same aboord us gently did receave, 
And without harme us farre away did beare, 
So farre that land, our mother, us did leave, 
And nought but sea and heaven to us appeare. 
Then hartlesse quite, and full of inward feare, 
That shepheard I besought to me to tell. 
Under what skie, or in what world we were, 
In which I saw no living people dwell. 
Who, me recomforting all that he might, 
Told me that that same was the Regiment 
Of a great Shepheardesse, that Cynthia hight, 
His liege, his Ladie, and his lifes Regent." 

This is the poetical version of Ralegh's appreciation of 
the treasure which he had lighted on in Ireland, and of 
what he did to make it known to the admiration and de- 
light of England. He returned to the Court, and Spenser 
with him. Again, for what reason we know not, he was 
received into favour. The poet, who accompanied him, 
was brought to the presence of the lady, who saw herself 
in " various mirrors " — Cynthia, Gloriana, Belphoebe, as she 
heard him read portions of the great poem which was to 
add a new glory to her reign. 

" The Shepheard of the Ocean (quoth he) 
Unto that Goddesse grace me first enhanced. 
And to mine oaten pipe enclin'd her eare. 
That she thenceforth therein gan take delight ; 
And it desir'd at timely houres to heare. 
All were my notes but rude and roughly dight ; 
For not by measure of her owne great mynde, 
And wondrous worth, she mott my simple song. 
But joyd that coimtry shepheard ought could fynd 
Worth barkening to, emongst the learned throng." 

He had already too well caught the trick of flattery — 
flattery in a degree almost inconceivable to us — which the 



IV.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART- 97 

fashions of the time, and the Queen's strange self-deceit, 
exacted from the loyalty and enthusiasm of Englishmen. 
In that art Ralegh was only too apt a teacher. Colin 
Clout, in his story of his recollections of the Court, lets 
us see how he was taught to think and to speak there : 

" But if I her like ought on earth might read, 
I would her lyken to a erowne of lillies, 
tJpon a virgin brydes adorned head, 
With Roses dight and Goolds and Daffadillies ; 
Or like the circlet of a Turtle true, 
In which all colours of the rainbow bee ; 
Or like faire Phebes garlond shining new, 
In which all pure perfection one may see. 
But vaine it is to thinke, by paragone 
Of earthly things, to Judge of things divine : 
Her power, her mercy, her wisdome, none 
Can deeme, but who the Godhead can define. 
Why then do I, base shepheard, bold and blind, 
Presume the things so sacred to prophane ? 
More fit it is t' adore, with humble mind. 
The image of the heavens in shape humane." 

The Queen, who heard herself thus celebrated, celebrated 
not only as a semi-divine person, but as herself unrivalled 
in the art of " making " or poetry — " her peerless skill in 
making well" — granted Spenser a pension of 50/. a year, 
which, it is said, the prosaic and frugal Lord Treasure!, 
always hard-driven for money and not caring mucli for 
poets, made difficulties about paying. But the new poem 
was not for the Queen's ear only. In the registers of the 
Stationers' Company occurs the following entry : 

" Primo die Decembris [1589]. 
" Mr. Ponsonbye — Entered for his Copye, a book intytuled the 
fayrye Quecne dysposed into xij bookes &c., authorysed under thandes 
of the Archbishop of Cante^bery and bothe the Wardens. vj<^"" 

5* 



98 SPENSER. [cHAr. 

Thus, between pamphlets of the hour — an account of the 
Arms of the City Companies on one side, and the last 
news from France on the other — the first of our great 
modern English poems was licensed to make its appear- 
ance. It appeared soon after, with the date of 1590. It 
was not the twelve books, but only the first three. It was 
accompanied and introduced, as usual, by a great host of 
commendatory and laudatory sonnets and poems. All the 
leading personages at ^Elizabeth's court were appealed to ; 
according to their several tastes or their relations to the 
poet, they are humbly asked to befriend, or excuse, or wel- 
come his poetical venture. The list itself is worth quot- 
ing : — Sir Christopher Hatton, then Lord Chancellor, the 
Earls of Essex, Oxford, Northumberland, Ormond, Lord 
Howard of Eftingham, Lord Grey of Wilton, Sir Walter 
Ralegh, Lord Burghley, the Earl of Cumberland, Lord 
Hunsdon, Lord Buckhurst, Walsingham, Sir John Norris, 
President of Munster. He addresses Lady Pembroke, in 
remembrance of her brother, that " heroic spirit," " the 
glory of our days," 

" Who first my Muse did lift out of the floor, 
To sing his sweet delights in lowl}^ lays." 

And he finishes with a sonnet to Lady Carew, one of Sir 
John Spencer's daughters, and another to " all the gracious 
and beautiful ladies of the Court," in which " the world's 
pride seems to be gathered." There come also congratu- 
lations and praises for himself. Ralegh addressed to him 
a fine but extravagant sonnet, in which he imagined Pe- 
trarch weeping for envy at the approval of the Faerie 
Qtieene, while " Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse," 
and even Homer trembled for his fame. Gabriel Harvey 
revoked his judgment on the Elvish Queen, and, not with- 



iv.J THE FAERIE QUEEXE— THE FIRST PART. <)9 

out some re^-ret for less ambitious days in the past, cheered 
on his friend in his noble enterprise. Gabriel Harvey 
has been so much, and not without reason, laughed at, 
and yet his verses welcoming the Faerie Queene are so 
full of true and warm friendship, and of unexpected re- 
finement and grace, that it is but just to cite them. In 
the eyes of the world he was an absurd personage : but 
Spenser saw in him perhaps his worthiest and trustiest 
friend. A generous and simple affection has almost got 
the better in them of pedantry and false taste. 

" Collyn, I see, by thy new taken taske, 

Some sacred fury hath enricht thy braynes, 
That leades thy muse in haughty verse to maske, 

And loath the layes that longs to lowly swaynes ; 
That lifts thy notes from Shepheardes unto kinges : 
So like the lively Larke that mounting singes. 

I 

" Thy lovely Rosolinde seemes now forlorne, 

And all thy gentle floekes forgotten quight: 
Thy chaunged hart now holdes thy pypes in seorne, 

Those prety pypes that did thy mates delight ; 
Those trusty mates, that loved thee so well ; 
Whom thou gav'st mirth, as they gave thee the bell. 

" Yet, as thou earst with thy sweete roundelayes 

Didst stirre to glee our laddes in homely bowers ; 

So moughtst thou now in these refyned layes 
Delight the daintie eares of higher powers : 

And so mought they, in their deepe skanning skill, 

Alow and grace our Collyns flowing quyll. 

" And faire befall that Fcm-ie Queene of thine. 

In whose faire eyes love linckt with vertue sittes ; 
Enfusing, by those bewties fyers devyne. 

Such high conceites into thy humble wittes, 
As raised hath poore pastors oaten reedes 
From rustick tunes, to chaunt heroique deedes. 



100 SPENSER. [chap. 

"So inouglil tliy Rcdcro.sse Knight with happy hand 

Victorious be in that faire Hands right, 
Which thou dost vayle in Type of Faery land, 

Elizas blessed field, that Albion hight : 
That shieldes her friendes, and warres her mightie foes, 
Yet still with people, peace, and plentie flowes. 

" But (jolly shepheard) though with pleasing style 
Thou feast the humour of the Courtly trayne, 
Let not conceipt thy setled scnce beguile, 

Ne daunted be through envy or disdaine. 
Subject thy dome to her Empyring spright. 
From whence thy Muse, and all the world, takes light. 

" HOBYNOLL." 

And to the Queen herself Spenser presented his work, 
in one of the boldest dedications perhaps ever penned : 

"To 
' The Mofvt High, Mightie, and Magnificent 

Empresse, 
Renowmed for piety, vertve, and all gratiovs government, 
ELIZABETH, 
By the Grace of God, 
Qveene of England, Fravnce, and Ireland, and of "Virginia, 
Defendovr of the Faith, &c. 
Her most hvmble Servaynt 
Edmvnd Spenser, 
Doth, in all hvmilitie, 
Dedicate, present, and consecrate 
These his labovrs. 
To live with the eternitie of her fame." 

" To live with the eternity of her fame " — the claim was 
a proud one, but it has proved a prophecy. The publica- 
tion of the Faerie Queene placed him at once and for his 
life-time at the head of all living English poets. The world 
of his day immediately acknowledged the charm and per- 



iv.J THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. lol 

fection of the new work of art which had taken it by sur- 
prise. As far as appears, it was welcomed heartily and 
generously. Spenser speaks in places of envy and detrac- 
tion, and he, like others, had no doubt his rivals and ene- 
mies. But little trace of censure appears, except in the 
stories about Burghley's dislike of him, as an idle rimer, 
and perhaps as a friend of his opponents. But his brother 
poets, men like Lodge and Drayton, paid honour, though 
in quaint phrases, to the learned Colin, the reverend Colin, 
the excellent and cunning Colin. A greater than they, if 
we may trust his editors, takes him as the representative 
of poetry, which is so dear to him. 

" If music and sweet poetry agree, 
As they must needs, the sister and the brother, 
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, 
Because thou Ipv'st tlie one, and I the other. 
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch 
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense ; 
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such 
As passing all conceit, needs no defence. 
Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound 
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes ; 
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd 
Whenas himself to singing he betakes. 
One god is god of both, as poets feign ; 
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain." 

{Shakeapere^ in the ''' Pannionate Pilgrim^'''' 1599.) 

Even the tierce pamphleteer, Thomas Nash, the scourge 
and torment of poor Gabriel Harvey, addresses Harvey's 
friend as heavenly Spenser, and extols " the Faerie Sing- 
ers' stately tuned verse." Spenser's title to be the " Poet 
of poets" was at once acknowledged as by acclamation. 
And he hTmself has no difHculty in accepting his position. 
In some lines on the death of a friend's wife, whom he la- 



102 SPENSER. [chap. 

ments and juaises, tlie idea presents itself that the great 
queen may not approve of her Shepherd wasting his lays 
on meaner persons, and he puts into his friend's mouth a 
deprecation of her possible jealousy. The lines are charac- 
teristic, both in their beauty and music, and in the strange- 
ness, in our eyes, of the excuse made for the poet. 

"Ne let Eliza, royall Shepheardesse, 
The praises of my parted love envy, 
For she hath praises in all plenteousnesse 
Powr'd upon her, like showers of Castaly, 
By her own Shepheard, Colin, her owne Shepheard, 
That her with heavenly hymnes doth deifie. 
Of rustick muse full hardly to be betterd. 

" She is the Rose, the glorie of the day, 
And mine the Primrose in the lowly shade : 
Mine, ah ! not mine ; amisse I mine did say : 
Not mine, but His, which mine awhile her made ; 
Mine to be His, with him to live for ay. 
that so faire a flower so soone should fade, 
And through untimely tempest fall away ! 

" She fell away in her first ages spring, 
Whil'st yQt her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde. 
And whilst her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring. 
She fell away against all course of kinde. 
For age to dye is right, but youth is wrong; 
She fel away like fruit blowne downe with winde. 
Weepe, Shepheard ! weepe, to make my undersong." 

Thus in both his literary enterprises Spenser had been 
signally successful. The Shepherd's Calendar^ in 1580, had 
immediately raised high hopes of his powers. The Faerie 
Queene, in 1590, had more than fulfilled them. In the 
interval a considerable change had happened in English 
cultivation. Shakespere had come to London, though the 
world did not yet know all that he was, Sidney had pub- 



IV.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 103 

lished his Defense of Poesie, and bad written the Arcadia, 
though it was not yet published. Marlowe had begun to 
write, and others beside hiin were preparing the change 
which was to come on the English Drama. Two scholars 
who had shared with Spenser in the bounty of Robert Now- 
ell were beginning, in different lines, to raise the level of 
thought and style. Hooker was beginning to give dignity 
to controversy, and to show what English prose might rise 
to. Lancelot Andrewes, Spenser's junior at school and 
college,' was training himself at St. Paul's to lead the way 
to a larger and higher kind of preaching than the English 
clergy had yet reached. The change of scene from Ireland 
to the centre of English interests must have been, as Spen- 
ser describes it, very impressive. England was alive with 
aspiration and effort : imaginations were inflamed and 
hearts stirred by the deeds of men who described with the 
same energy with which they acted. Amid such influences 
and with such a friend as Ralegh, Spenser may naturally 
have been tempted by some of the dreams of advancement 
of which Ralegh's soul was full. There is strong prob- 
ability, from the language of his later poems, that he in- 
dulged such hopes, and that they were disappointed. A 
year after the entry in the Stationers' Register of the 
Faerie Queene (29 Dec, 1590), Ponsonby, his publisher, 
entered a volume of Complaints, containing sundry small 
poems of the World's Vanity,'^ to which he prefixed the 
followmg notice : 

" The Printer to the Gentle Reader. 

" Since my late setting foorth of the Faerie Queene, finding that it 
hath found a favourable passage amongst you, I have sithence endev- 
oured by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment 
of your delights), to get into my handes such smale Poemes of the 
same Authors, as 1 heard were disperst abroad in suudrie hands, and 



1(»4 SPENSER. [chap. 

not easie to bee come by, by himselfe ; some of them baving bene 
(liverslie imbeziled and purloyned from him since his departure over 
Sea, Of the which I have, by good meanes, gathered togeather these 
fewe parcels present, which I have caused to bee imprinted alto- 
geather, for that they al seeme to containe Hke matter of argument 
in them ; being all coniplaints and meditations of the worlds vanitie, 
verie grave and profitable. To which otfect I understand that he be- 
sides wrote sundrie others, namelie hWhsimii\s and Cantinim cantico- 
rmn, translated A seuUjhU slumber^ llie hill of lovers, his Pargatoriey 
being all dedicated to Ladies ; so as it may seeme he ment them all 
to one volume. Besides some other Pamphlets looselie scattered 
abroad : as The dying Pellican, T7i€ /towers of t/ie Lord, Tlic sacrifice 
if a .sinner, The seveii Psahne.s, &c., which, when I can, either by him- 
selfe or otherwise, attaine too, I meane likewise for your favour sake 
to set foorth. In the meane time, praying you gentlie to accept of 
these, and graciouslie to entertaine the new Poet, / take leaved 

The collection i.s a miscellaneous one, both as to subjects 
and date : it contains, among other things, the translations 
from I'etrarch and Du Bellay, whicli had appeared in Van- 
der Noodt's Theatre of Worldlings, m 1569. But there 
are also some pieces of later date ; and they disclose not 
only personal sorrows and griefs, but also an experience 
which had ended in disgust and disappointment. In spite 
f of Ralegh's friendship, he had found tliat in the Court he 
was not likely to thrive. The two powerful men who had 
l)een his earliest friends had disappeared. Philip Sidney 
had died in 158G; Leicester, soon after the destruction of 
the Armada, in 1588. And they had been followed (April, 
1 590) by Sidney's powerful father-in-law, Francis Walsing- 
ham. The death of Leicester, untended, unlamented, pow- 
erfully impressed Spenser, always keenly alive t6 the pa- 
thetic vicissitudes of human greatness. In one of these 
pieces. The Ruins of Time, addressed to Sidney's sister, 
the Countess of Pembroke, Spenser thus imagines the 
death of Leicester — 



IV.] THE FAERIE QUEEXE— THE FIRST PAKT. lO* 

" It is not long, since these two eyes beheld 
A mightie Prince, of most renowmed race, 
Whom England high in count of honour held, 
And greatest ones did sue to gaine his grace ; 
Of greatest ones he, greatest in his place. 
Sate in the bosome of his Soveraiue, 
And Right and loyall did his word maintaine. 

" I saw him die, I saw him die, as one 
Of the meane people, and brought foorth on beare : 
I saw him die, and no man left to mone 
His dolefuU fate, that late him loved deare : 
Scarse anie left to close his eyalids neare ; 
Scarse anie left upon his lips to laie 
The sacred sod, or Requiem to sale. 

" ! trustless state of miserable men, 
That builde your blis on hope of earthly thing. 
And vainlie thinke your selves halfe happie then. 
When painted faces with smooth flattering 
Doo fawne on you, and your wide praises sing; 
And, when the courting masker louteth lowe. 
Him true in heart and trustie to you trow." 

For Sidney, the darling of the time, \\\\o liad been to. 
him not merely a eordial friend, but the realized type of 
all that was o-loriou$ in manhood, and beautiful in charac- 
ter and gifts, his mourning was more than that of a look- 
er-on at a moving instance of the frailty of greatness. It 
was the poet's sorrow for the poet, who had almost been to 
him what the elder brother is to the younger. Both now, 
and in later years, his affection for one who was become 
to him a glorified saint, showed itself in deep and genuine 
expression, through the affectations which crowned the 
" herse " of Astrophel and Philisides. He was persuaded 
that Sidney's death had been a grave blow to literature 

and learning. The Rain^ of Time^ and still more the 
II 



106 SPENSER. [chap. 

Tears of the Muses, are full of lamentations over return- 
ing barbarism and ignorance, and the slight account made 
by those in power of the gifts and the arts of the writer, 
the poet, and the dramatist. Under what was popularly 
thought the crabbed and parsimonious administration of 
Burghley, and with the churlishness of the Puritans, whom 
he was supposed to foster, it seemed as if the poetry of 
the time was passing away in chill discouragement. The 
effect is described in lines which, as we now naturally sup- 
pose, and Dryden also thought, can refer to no one but 
Shakespere. But it seems doubtful whether all this could 
have been said of Shakespere in 1590. It seems more 
likely that this also is an extravagant compliment to Philip 
Sidney, and his masking performances. He was lament- 
ed elsewhere under the poetical name of Willy. If it 
refers to him, it was probably written before his death, 
though not published till after it; for the lines imply, not 
that he is literally dead, but that he is in retirement. The 
expression that he is " dead of late," is explained in four 
lines below, as " choosing to sit in idle cell," and is one of 
Spenser's common figures for inactivity or sorrow.' 

The verses are the lamentations of the Muse of Comedy. 

" Thalia. 
" Where be the sweete dehghts of learning's treasure 
That wont with Comick sock to beautefie 
The painted Theaters, and fill with pleasure 
The listners eyes and eares with melodie ; 
In which I late was wont to raine as Queene, 
And maske in mirth with Graces well beseene ? 

" ! all is gone ; and all that goodly glee, 
Which wont to be the glorie of gay wits, 

1 V. Colin Clout, 1. 81. Adrophel, 1. 175. 



I v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 107 

Is layed abed, and no where now to see ; 
And in her roome unseemly Sorrow sits, 
With hollow browes and greisly countenauncc, 
Marring my joyous gentle dalliaunce. 

■• And him beside sits ugly Barbarisme, 
And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late 
Out of dredd darknes of the deepe Abysme, 
Where being bredd, he light and heaven does hate ; 
They in the mindes of men now tyrannize, 
And the faire Scene with rudenes foule disguize. 

" All places they with follie have possest. 
And with vaine toyes the vulgare entertaine ; 
But me have banished, with all the rest 
That whilome wont to wait upon my traine, 
Fine Counterfesaunce, and unhurtfull Sport, 
Delight, and Laughter, deckt in seemly sort. 

" All these, and all that els the Comick Stage 
With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced, 
By which mans life in his likcst image 
AVas limned forth, are wholly now defaced ; 
And those sweete wits, which wont the like to frame, 
Are now despizd, and made a laughing game. 

And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made 
To mock her selfe, and truth to imitate, 
With kindly counter under Miralck shade, 
Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late; 
With whom all joy and jolly merriment 
Is also dreaded, and in dolour drent. 



" But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen 
Large streames of honnie and sweete Nectar flowe, 
Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men. 
Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe, 
Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell, 
T4>an so himselfe to mockorio to sell." 



108 SPENSER. [chap. 

But the most remarkable of these pieces is a satirical 
fable, Mother HuhbenVa Tale of the Ape and Fox, which 
may take rank witli the satirical writings of Chaucer and 
Dryden for keenness of touch, for breadth of treatment, 
for swing and fiery scorn, and sustained strength of sar- 
casm. By his visit to the Court, Spenser had increased 
his knowledge of the realities of life. That brilliant Court, 
with a goddess at its head, and full of charming swains 
and divine nym})hs, had also another side. It was still his 
poetical heaven. But with that odd insensibility to anom- 
aly and glaring contrasts, which is seen in his time, and 
perhaps exists at all times, he passed fronj the celebration 
of the dazzling glories of Cynthia's Court into a fierce 
vein of invective against its treacheries, its vain shows, its 
unceasing and mean intrigues, its savage jealousies, its fa- 
tal rivalries, the scramble there for preferment in Church 
and State. When it is considered what great persons 
might easily and naturally have been identified at the time 
with the Ape ami the Fox, the confodei'ate impostors, 
charlatans, and bullying swindlei's, who had stolen the lion's 
skin, and by it mounted to the high places of the State, it 
seems to be a proof of the indifference of the Court to the 
power of mere literature, that it should have been safe to 
Avrite and publish so freely and so cleverly. Dull Cath- 
olic lampoons and Puritan scurrilities did not pass thus 
unnoticed. They were viewed as dangerous to the State, 
and dealt with accordingly. The fable contains what we 
can scarcely doubt to be some of that wisdom which Spen- 
ser learnt by his experience of the Court. 

" So pitif ull a thing is Suters state ! 
Most miserable man, whom wicked fate 
Hath brought to Court, to sue for had-ywist, 
That few have found, and manie one hath mist ! 



1T.1 THK FAERIE QUEEXE— THE FIRi^T PART. loit 

Full little knowest thou, that hnst not tride, 
What hell it is in suing long to bide : 
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent ; 
To wast long nights in pensive discontent ; 
To speed to day, to be put back to-morrow ; 
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow ; 
To have thy Princes grace, yet want her Peeres ; 
To have thy asking, yet waite manic yeeres ; 
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares ; 
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne. 
To spend, to give, to want, to be undoiuie. 
Unhappie wight, borne to disastrous end, 
That doth his life in so long tendance spend ! 

*' Who ever leaves sweete home, where meane estate 
In safe assurance, without strife or hate, 
Findes all things needful! for contentment meeke. 
And will to Court for shadowes vaine to seeke, 
Or hope to gaine, himselfe will a daw trie : 
That curse God send unto mine enemie !" 

Spenser probably did not mean his characters to fit too 
closely to living persons. That might have been danger- 
ous. But it is difficult to believe that he had not distinct- 
ly in his eye a very great personage, the greatest in Eng- 
land next to the Queen, in the following picture of the 
doings of the Fox installed at Court. 

"But the false Foxe most kindly plaid his part; 
For whatsoever mother-wit or arte 
Could worke, he put in proofe : no practise slie. 
No counterpoint of cunning policie. 
No reach, no breach, that might him profit bring, 
But he the same did to his purpose wring. 
Nought suffered he the Ape to give or graunt, 
But through his hand must passe the Fiaunt. 

* * * * * * 

He chafPred Chayres in which Churchmen were set, 
And breach of lawes to prlvie ferme did let : 



no SPENSER. [cHAi' 

No statute so established might bee, 

Nor ordinauneo so needfull, but that hee 

Would violate, though not with violence, 

Yet under colour of the confidence 

The which the Ape repos'd in him alone. 

And reckned him the kingdomos corner-stone. 

And ever, when ho ought would briug to pas, 

His long experience the j)latforme was : 

And, when he ought not pleasing would put by 

The cloke was care of thrift, and husbandry, 

For to encrease the common treasures store ; 

Hut his owne treasure he encreased more, 

Aiul lifted up his loftie towres thereby, 

That they began to threat the neigh)>()ur sky ; 

The whiles the Princes pallaces fell fast 

To mine (for what thing can ever last?) 

And whilcst the other Peeres, for povertie. 

Wore forst their auncient houses to let lie. 

And their olde Castles to the ground to fall. 

Which their forefathers, famous over-all, 

Had founded for the-Kingdome's ornament. 

And for their memories long moniment; 

But he no count made of Nobilitie, 

Nor the wilde beasts whom armos did glorifie. 

The Realmes chiofo strength and girlond of the crowne 

All these through fainod crimes he thrust adowne. 

Or made them dwell in darknes of disgrace ; 

For none, but whom he list, might come in place. 

" Of men of amies he had but small regard, 
But kept them lowe, and streigned verie hard. 
For men of learning little he esteemed ; 
His wisdome he above their learning deemed. 
As for the rascall Commons, least he cared, 
For not so common was his bountie shared. 
Let God, (said he) if please, care for the manie, 
I for my selfe must care before els anie. 
So did he good to none, to manie ill. 
So did he all the kingdome rob and pill ; 



IV. ] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. Ill 

Yet none durst speake, ne none durst of him plaine, 
So great he was in grace, and rich through gaine. 
Ne would he anie let to have accesse 
Unto the Prince, but by his owne addresse, 
For all that els did come were sure to faile." 

Even at Court, however, the poet finds a contrast to all 
this : he had known Philip Sidney, and Ralegh was his 
friend. 

" Yet the brave Courtier, in whose beauteous thought 
Regard of honour harbours more than ought, 
Doth loath such base condition, to backbite 
Anies good name for en vie or despite : 
He stands on tearmes of honourable minde, 
Ne will be carried with the common winde 
Of Courts inconstant mutabilitie, 
Ne after everie tattling fable flie ; 
But heares and sees the follies of the rest. 
And thereof gathers for himselfe the best. 
He will not creepe, nor crouche with fained face, 
But walkes upright with comely stedfast pace. 
And unto all doth yeeld due courtesie ; 
But not with kissed hand belowe the knee. 
As that same Apish crue is wont to doo : 
For he disdaines himselfe t' embase theretoo. 
He hates fowle leasings, and vile flatterie, 
Two filthie blots in noble gentrie ; 
And lothefull idlenes he doth detest, 
The canker worme of everie gentle brest. 

" Or lastly, when the bodie list to pause. 
His minde unto the Muses he Avithdrawes : 
Sweete Ladie Muses, Ladies of delight, 
Delights of life, and ornaments of light ! 
With whom he close confers with wise discourse, 
Of Natures workes, of heavens continuall course, 
Of forreine lands, of people different. 
Of kingdomes change, of divers gouvernment. 



112 SPEKSER. [chap. 

Of dreadful! battailes of renowned Knights ; 
With which he kindleth his ambitious sprights 
To like desire and praise of noble fame, 
The onely upshot whereto he doth ayme : 
For all his minde on honour fixed is, 
To which he levels all his purposis, 
And in his Princes service spends his dayes, 
Not so much for to gaine, or for to raise 
Himselfe to high degree, as for his grace, 
And in his liking to winne worthie place, 
Through due deserts and comely carriage." 

The fable also throws light on the way in which Spen- 
ser regarded the religious parties, whose strife was becom- 
ing loud and threatening. Spenser is often spoken of as a 
Puritan. He certainly had the Puritan hatred of Rome ; 
and in the Church system as it existed in England he saw 
many instances of ignorance, laziness, and corruption ; and 
he agreed with the Puritans in denouncing them. His 
pictures of the " formal priest," with his excuses for doing 
nothing, his new-fashioned and improved substitutes for 
the ornate and also too lengthy ancient service, and his 
general ideas of self-complacent comfort, has in it an odd 
mixture of Roman Catholic irony with Puritan censure. 
Indeed, though Spenser hated with an Englishman's hatred 
all that he considered Roman superstition and tyranny, he 
had a sense of the poetical impressiveness of the old cere- 
monial, and the ideas which clung to it — its pomp, its beau- 
ty, its suggestiveness — very far removed from the icono- 
clastic temper of the Puritans. In his View of the State 
of Ireland, he notes as a sign of its evil condition the state 
of the churches, " most of them ruined and even with the 
ground," and the rest " so unhandsomely patched and 
thatched, that men do even shun the places, for the un- 
comeliness thereof." " The outward form (assure your- 



IV.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 113 

self)," he adds, " doth greatly draw the rude people to the 
reverencing and frequenting thereof, whatever some of our 
late too nice fools may say, that there is nothing in the 
seemly form and comely order of the church." 

" ' Ah ! but (said th' Ape) the charge is wondrous great, 
To feede mens soules, and hath an heavie threat.' 
' To feed mens soules (quoth he) is not in man ; 
For they must feed themselves, doo what we can. 
We are but charged to lay the meate before : 
Eate they that list, we need to doo no more. 
But God it is that feeds them with his grace. 
The bread of life powr'd downe from heavenly place. 
Therefore said he, that with the budding rod 
Did rule the Jewes, All shalhe taught of God. 
That same hath Jesus Christ now to him raught, 
By whom the flock is rightly fed, and taught : 
He is the Shepheard, and the Priest is hee ; 
We but his shepheard swaines ordain'd to bee. 
Therefore herewith doo not your selfe dismay ; 
Ne is the paines so great, but beare ye may. 
For not so great, as it was wont of yore, 
It's now a dayes, ne halfe so streight and sore. 
They whilome used duly cverie day 
Their service and their holie things to say. 
At raorne and even, besides their Anthemes sweete, 
Their penie Masses, and their Complynes meete. 
Their Diriges, their Trentals, and their shrifts. 
Their memories, their singings, and their gifts. 
Now all those needlesse works are laid away ; 
Now once a weeke, upon the Sabbath day. 
It is enough to doo our small devotion. 
And then to follow any merrie motion. 
Ne are we tyde to fast, but when we list ; 
Ne to weare garments base of wollen twist, 
But with the finest silkes us to aray, 
That before God we may appeare more gay, 
6 



114 SPENSER. [chap. 

Resembling Aarons gloria in his place : 
For farre unfit it is, that person bace 
Should with vile cloaths approach Gods majestie, 
Whom no uncleannes may approachen nie ; 
Or that all men, which anie master serve, 
Govd garments for their service should deserve ; 
But he that serves the Lord of hoasts most high, 
And that in highest place, t' approach him nigh. 
And all the peoples prayers to present 
Before his throne, as on ambassage sent 
Both too and fro, should not deserve to weare 
A garment better than of wool! or heare. 
Beside, we may have lying by our sides 
Our lovely Lasses, or bright shining Brides : 
We be not tyde to wilfull chastitie, 
But have the (Jospell of free libertie." 

But his weapon is double-edged, and he had not much 
more love for 

"That ungracious crew which feigns demurest grace." 

The first prescription which the Priest gives to the Pox 
who desires to rise to preferment in the Church is t(\ win 
the favour of some great Puritan noble. 

" First, therefore, when ye have in handsome wise 
Your selfe attyred, as you can devise. 
Then to some Noble-man your selfe applye, 
Or other great one in the worldes eye, 
That hath a zealous disposition 
To God, and so to his religion. 
There must thou fashion eke a godly zeale. 
Such as no carpers may contrayre reveale ; 
For each thing fained ought more warie bee. 
There thou must walke in sober gravitee, 
And seeme as SamtUke as Sainte Radegund : 
Fast much, pray oft, looke lowly on the ground. 



IV.] THE FAERIE QUEENE— THE FIRST PART. 115 

And unto everie one doo curtesie meeke : 

These lookes (nought sayhig) doo a benefice seeke, 

And be thou sure one not to lack or long." 

But he' is impartial, and points out that there are other 
ways of rising — by adopting the fashions of the Court, 
" facing, and forging, and scoffing, and crouching to please," 
and so to " mock out a benefice ;" or else, by compound- 
ing with a patron to give him lialf the profits, and in 
the case of a bishopric, to submit to the alienation of its 
manors to some powerful favourite, as the Bishop of Sal- 
isbury had to surrender Sherborn to Sir Walter Ralegh. 
Spenser, in his dedication of Mother Huhberd's Tale to 
one of the daughters of Sir John Spencer, Lady Compton 
and Monteagle, speaks of it as " long sithence composed 
in the raw conceit of youth." But, whatever this may 
mean, and it was his way thus to deprecate severe judg- 
ments, his allowing the publication of it at this time, shows, 
if the work itself did not show it, that he was in very seri- 
ous earnest in his bitter sarcasms on the base and evil arts 
which brought success at the Court. 

He stayed in England about a year and a half [1590- 
91], long enough, apparently, to make up his mind that he 
had not much to hope for from his great friends, Ralegh ^ 
and perhaps Essex, who were busy on their own schemes. 
Ralegh, from whom Spenser might hope most, was just 
beginning to plunge into that extraordinary career, in the 
thread of which glory and disgrace, far-sighted and prince- 
ly public spirit and insatiate private greed, were to be so 
strangely intertwined. In 1592 he planned the great ad- 
venture which astonished London by the fabulous plunder 
of the Spanish treasure-ships; in the same year he was 
in the Tower, under the Queen's displeasure for his secret 
marriage, affecting the most ridiculous despair at her go- 



no SPENSER. [niAP. IV. 

iiig away horn the neighbourhood, and pouring forth his 
flatteries on this old woman of sixty as if he had no bride 
of his own to love : — " I that was w ont to behold her rid- 
ing like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus; 
the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks 
like a nymph ; sometimes, sitting in the shade like a god- 
dess ; sometimes, singing like an angel^, sometimes, play- 
ing like Orpheus — behold the sorrow of this world — once 
amiss, hath bereaved me of all." Then came the explora- 
tion of Guiana, the expedition to Cadiz, the Island voyage 
[1595-1597]. Ralegh had something else to do than to 
think of Spenser's fortunes. 

Spenser turned back once more to Ireland, to his clerk- 
ship of the Council of Munstcr, which he soon resigned ; 
to be worried with lawsuits about 'Mands in Shanbally- 
more and Ballingrath," by his time-serving and oppressive 
Irish neighbour, Maurice Roche, Lord Fermoy ; to brood 
still over his lost ideal and hero, Sidney ; to write tlie story 
of his visit in the pastoral supplement to the ShephercVs 
Calendar^ Colin Cloufs come home again ; to pursue tlic 
story of Gloriana's knights ; and to find among the Irish 
maidens another Elizabeth, a wife instead of a queen, 
whose wooing and winning were to give new themes to 
his imagination. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FAERIE QUEENE. 

" Uncouth [= unknown], unkist,''^ are the words from 
Chaucer,' with which the friend, who introduced Spenser's 
earliest poetry to the world, bespeaks forbearance, and 
promises matter for admiration and delight in the S7iep- 
herd's Calendar. " You have to know my new poet," he 
says in effect: "and when you have learned his ways, you 
will find how much you have to honour and love him." 
" I doubt not," he says, with a boldness of prediction, 
manifestly sincere, which is remarkable about an unknown 
man, " that so soon as his name shall come into the knowl- 
edge of men, and liis worthiness be sounded in the trump 
of fame, but that he shall be not only kissed, but also 
beloved of all, embraced of the most, and wondered at of 
the best." Never was prophecy more rapidly and more 
signally verified, probably beyond the prophet's largest 
expectation. But he goes on to explain and indeed apol- 
ogize for certain features of the new poet's work, which 
even to readers of that day might seem open to exception. 
And to readers of to-day, the phrase, uncouth, unkist, cer- 
tainly expresses what many have to confess, if they are 
honest, as to their first acquaintance with the Faerie 
Queene. Its place in literature is established beyond con- 

' " Unknow, iinkyst ; and lost, that is unsoght." 

Troylns and Cryseide, lib. i. 



118 SPP:NSER. [chap. 

troversy. Yet its first and unfamiliar aspect inspires re- 
spect, perhaps interest, rather than attracts and satisfies. 
It is not the remoteness of the subject alone, nor the dis- 
tance of three centuries which raises a bar between it and 
those to whom it is new. Shakespere becomes familiar 
to us from the first moment. The impossible legends of 
Arthur have been made in the language of to-day once 
more to touch our sympathies, and have lent themselves 
to express our thoughts. But at first acquaintance the 
Faerie Queene to many of us has been disappointing. It 
has seemed not only antique, but artificial. It has seem- 
ed fantastic. It has seemed, we cannot help avowing, 
tiresome. It is not till the early appearances have worn 
off, and we liave learned to make many allow^ances and 
to surrender ourselves to the feelings and the standards 
by which it claims to affect and govern us, that we really 
find under what noble guidance we are proceeding, and 
what subtle and varied spells are ever round us. 

1. The Faerie Queene is the work of an unformed lit- 
erature, the product of an unperfected art. English poe- 
try, English language, in Spenser's, nay in Shakespere's 
day, had much to learn, much to unlearn. They never, 
perhaps, have been stronger or richer, than in that mar- 
vellous burst of youth, with all its freedom of invention, 
of observation, of reflection. But they liad not that which 
only the experience and practice of eventful centuries could 
give them. Even genius must wait for the gifts of time. 
It cannot forerun the limitations of its day, nor antici- 
pate the conquests and common possessions of the future. 
Things are impossible to the first great masters of art 
which are easy to their second-rate successors. The pos- 
sibility, or the necessity of breaking through some con- 
vention, of attempting some unattempted effort, had not, 



v.] TFIE FAERIE QUEENE. 119 

among other great enterprises, occurred to them. They 
were laying the steps in a magnificent fashion on which 
those after them were to rise. But we ought not to shut 
our eyes to mistakes or faults to which attention had not 
yet been awakened, or for avoiding which no reasonable 
means had been found. To learn from genius, we must 
try to recognize both what is still imperfect and what is 
grandly and unwontedly successful. There is no great 
work of art, not excepting even the Iliad or the Parthenon, 
which is not open, especially in point of ornament, to the 
scoif of the scoffer, or to the injustice of those who do not 
mind being unjust. But all art belongs to man ; and man, 
even when he is greatest, is always limited and imperfect. 

The Faerie Queene, as a whole, bears on its face a great 
fault of construction. It carries with it no adequate ac- 
count of its own story ; it does not explain itself, or con- 
tain in its own structure what would enable a reader to 
understand how it arose. It has to be accounted for by a 
prose explanation and key outside of itself. The poet in- 
tended to reserve the central event, whicli was the occasion 
of all the adventures of the poem, till they had all been re- 
lated, leaving them as it were in the air, till at the end of 
twelve long books the reader should at last be told how 
the whole thing had originated, and what it was all about. 
He made the mistake of confounding the answer to a rid- 
dle with the crisis which unties the tangle of a plot and 
satisfies the suspended interest of a tale. None of the 
great model poems before him, however full of digression 
and episode, had failed to arrange their story with clear- 
ness. They needed no commentary outside themselves to 
say why they began as they did, and out of what antece- 
dents they arose. If they started at once from the middle 
of things, they made their story, as it unfolded itself, ex- 



\'H) SPENSER. [chap. 

j)lain, by more or less skilful devices, all that needed to 
be known about their beginnings. They did not think of 
rules of art. They did of themselves naturally what a 
good story-teller does, to make himself intelligible and in- 
teresting ; and it is not easy to be interesting, unless the 
parts of the story are in their place. 

The defect seems to have come upon Spenser when it 
was too late to remedy it in the construction of his poem ; 
and he adopted the somewhat clumsy expedient of telling 
us what the poem itself ought to have told us of its gen- 
eral story, in a letter to Sir Walter Ralegh. Ralegh him- 
self, indeed, suggested the letter : apparently (from the date, 
Jan. 23, 1590), after the first part had gone through the 
press. And wdthout this after-thought, as the twelfth book 
was never reached, we should have been left to gather the 
outline and plan of the story, from imperfect glimpses and 
allusions, as we have to fill up from hints and assumptions 
the gaps of an unskilful narrator, who leaves out what is 
essential to the understanding of his tale. 

Incidentally, however, this letter is an advantage : for 
we have in it the poet's own statement of his purpose in 
writing, as well as a necessary sketch of his story. His 
allegory, as he had explained to Bryskett and his friends, 
had a moral purpose. He meant to shadow forth, under 
the figures of twelve knights, and in their various exploits, 
the characteristics of " a gentleman or noble person," 
" fashioned in virtuous and gentle discipline." He took 
his machinery from the popular legends about King Ar- 
thur, and his heads of moral philosophy from the current 
Aristotelian catalogue of the Schools. 

"Sir, knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be construed, 
and this booke of mine, which I have entituled the Faerie Queene, 
being a continued Allegory, or darke conceit, I haue thought good, 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 121 

as well for avoyding of gealous opinions and misconstructions, as also 
for your better light in reading thereof (being so by you commanded), 
to discover unto you the general intention and meaning, which in 
the whole course thereof I have fashioned, without expressing of any 
particular purposes, or by accidents, therein occasioned. The gen- 
erall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or no- 
ble person in vertuous and gentle discipline : Which for that I con- 
ceived shoulde be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with 
an historicall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, 
rather for variety of matter then for profite of the ensample, I chose 
the history e of King Arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his 
person, being made famous by many mens former workes, and also 
furthest from the daunger of envy, and suspition of present time. In 
which I have followed all the antique Poets historicall ; first Homere, 
who in the Persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a 
good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his Ilias, the other in 
his Odysseis : then Virgil, whose like intention was to doe in the per- 
son of Aeneas : after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlan- 
do : and lately Tasso dissevered them againe, and formed both parta 
in two persons, namely that part which they in Philosophy call Eth- 
ice, or vertues of a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo ; the othe>' 
named Politice in his Godfredo. By ensample of which excellente 
Poets, I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the im- 
age of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, 
as Aristotle hath devised ; the which is the purpose of these first 
twelve bookes : which if I finde to be well accepted, I may be per- 
haps enco raged to frame the other part of polliticke vertues in his 
person, after that hee came to be king." 

Then, after explaining that he meant the Faerie Queene. 
" for glory in general intention, but in particular " for 
Elizabeth, and his Faerie Land for her kingdom, he pro- 
ceeds to explain, what the first three books hardly explain, 
what the Faerie Queene had to do with the structure of 
the poem. 

" But, because the beginning of the whole worke seemeth abrupte, 
and as depending upon other antecedents, it needs that ye know the 
occasion of these three knights seuerall adventures. For the Meth' 
I 6* 



122 SPENSER. [chap. 

ode of a Poet historical is not such, as of an Historiographer. For 
an Historiographer discourseth of afEayres orderly as they were 
donne, accounting as well the times as the actions ; but a Poet 
thrusteth into the raiddest, even where it most concerneth him, and 
there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to 
come, makoth a pleasing Analysis of all. 

" The begiiniing therefore of my history, if it were to be told by 
an Historiographer should be the twelfth booke, which is the last ; 
where I devise that the Faerie Queene kept her Annuall feaste xii. 
dayes; uppon which xii. severall dayes, the occasions of the xii. 
severall adventures hapned, which, being undertaken by xii. severall 
knights, are in these xii. books severally handled and discoursed. 
The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented 
him selfe a tall clownishe younge man, who falling before the Queene 
of Faries desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during 
that feast she might not refuse ; which was that hee might have the 
atchievement of any adventure, which during that feaste should hap- 
pen : that being graunted, he rested him on the floore, untitte through 
liis rusticity for a better place. Soone after entred a faire Ladye in 
mourning weedes, riding on a white Asse, with a dwarfe behinde her 
leading a warlike steed, that bore the Amies of a knight, and his 
speare in the dwarfes hand. Shee, falling befoi-e the Queene of 
Faeries, complayued that her father and mother, an ancient King and 
Queene, had beene by ftn huge dragon many years shut up in a brasen 
Castle, who thence suif red them not to yssew ; and therefore besought 
the Faerie Queene to assygne her some one of her knights to take on 
him that exployt. Presently that clownish person, upstarting, desired 
that adventure : whereat the Queene much wondering, and the Lady 
much gainesaying, yet he earnestly importuned his desire. In the 
end the Lady told him, that unlesse that armour which she brought 
would serve him (that is, the armour of a Christian man specified by 
Saint Paul, vi. Ephes. ) that he could not succeed in that enterprise ; 
which being forthwith put upon him, with dewe furnitures thereunto, 
he seemed the goodliest man in al that company, and was well liked 
of the Lady. And eftesoones taking on him knighthood, and mount- 
ing on that straunge courser, he went forth with her on that advent- 
ure : where beginneth the first booke, viz. 

" A gentle knight was pricking on the playne, &c." 



v.] TifE FAERIE QUEEXE. 123 

That it was not without reason that this explanatory key 
was prefixed to the work, and that either Spenser or Ra- 
legh felt it to be almost indispensable, appears from the 
concluding paragraph. 

"Thus much, Sir, I have briefly overronne to direct your under- 
standing to the wel-head of the History ; that from thence gathering 
the whole intention of the conceit, ye may as in a handfull gripe al 
the discourse, which otherwise may happily seeme tedious and con- 
fused." 

iVccording to the plan thus sketched out, we have but a 
fragment of the work. It was published in two parcels, 
each of three books, in 1590 and 1596 ; and after his death 
two cantos, with two stray stanzas, of a seventh book were 
found and printed. Each perfect book consists of twelve 
cantos of from thirty-five to sixty of his nine-hne stanzas. 
The books published in 1590 contain, as he states in his 
prefatory letter, the legends of Holiness^ of Tem'perance. 
and of Chastity. Those published in 1596 contain the 
legends of Frienchhip^ of Justice^ and of Courtesy. The 
posthumous cantos are entitled. Of Mutability^ and are 
said to be apparently parcel of a legend of Constancy. 
The poem which was to treat of the " politic " virtues was 
never approached. Thus we have but a fourth part of the 
whole of the projected work. It is very doubtful whether 
the remaining six books were completed. But it is prob- 
able that a portion of them was written, which, except the 
cantos On Mutability^ has perished. And the intended ti- 
tles or legends of the later books have not been preserved. 

Thus the poem was to be an allegorical story ; a story 
branching out into twelve separate stories, which them- 
selves would branch out again and involve endless other 
stories. It is a complex scheme to keep well in hand, and 



124 yPENSEK. [chap. 

Spenser's art in doing so has been praised by some of his 
critics. Bat the art, if there is any, is so subtle that it 
fails to save the reader from perplexity. The truth is that 
the power of ordering and connecting a long and compli- 
cated plan was not one of Spenser's gifts. In the first two 
boots, the allegorical story proceeds from point to point 
with fair coherence and consecutiveness. After them the 
attempt to hold the scheme together, except in the loosest 
and most general way, is given up as too troublesome or 
too confined. The poet prefixes, indeed, the name of a 
particular virtue to each book, but, with slender reference 
to it, he surrenders himself freely to his abundant flow of 
ideas, and to wliatever fancy or invention tempts him, and 
ranges unrestrained over the whole field of knowledge and 
imagination. In the first two books, the allegory is trans- 
parent, and the story connected. The allegory is of the 
nature of the Pilr/rim^s Progress. It starts from the be- 
lief that religion, purified from falsehood, superstition, and 
sin, is the foundation of a'U nobleness in man ; and it por- 
trays, under images and with names, for the most part 
easily understood, and easily applied to real counterparts, 
the struggle which every one at that time supposed to be 
going on, between absolute truth and righteousness on 
one side, and fatal error and bottomless wickedness on the 
other. Una, the Truth, the one and only Bride of man's 
spirit, marked out by the tokens of humility and inno- 
cence, and by her power over wild and untamed natures 
— the single Truth, in contrast to the counterfeit Duessa, 
false religion, and its actual embodiment in the false rival 
Queen of Scots — Truth, the object of passionate homage, 
real with many, professed with all, which after the impost- 
ures and scandals of the preceding age, had now become 
characteristic of that of Elizabeth — Truth, its claims, its 



v.] THE FAERTE QtEENE. 125 

dangers, and its champions, are the subject of the first 
book : and it is represented as leading the manhood of 
England, in spite not only of terrible conflict, but of de- 
feat and falls, through the discipline of repentance, to holi- 
ness and the blessedness which comes with it. The Red 
Cross Knight, St. George of England, whose name Geor- 
gos, the Ploughman, is dwelt upon, apparently to suggest 
that from the commonalty, the " tall clownish young men," 
were raised up the great champions of the Truth — though 
sorely troubled by the wiles of Duessa, by the craft of the 
arch-sorcerer, by the force and pride of the great powers 
of the Apocalyptic Beast and Dragon, finally overcomes t, 
them, and wins the deliverance of Una and her love. / 

The second book. Of Teraperance^ pursues the subject, 
and represents the internal conquests of self-mastery, the 
conquests of a man over his passions, his violence, his cov- 
etousness, his ambiti(;n, his despair, his sensuality. Sir 
Guyon, after conquering many foes of goodness, is the de- 
stroyer of the most perilous of them all, Acrasia, licentious- 
ness, and her ensnaring Bower of Bliss. But after this, 
the thread at once of story and allegory, slender hence- 
forth at the best, is neglected and often entirely lost. The 
third book, the Legend of Chastity^ is a repetition of the 
ideas of the latter part of the second, with a heroine, Brit- 
omart, in place of the Knight of the previous book. Sir 
Guyon, and with a special glorification of the high-flown 
and romantic sentiments about purity, which were the po- 
etic creed of the courtiers of Elizabeth, in flagrant and 
sometimes in tragic contrast to their practical conduct of 
life. The loose and ill-compacted nature of the plan be- 
comes still more evident in the second instalment of the 
work. Even the special note of each particular virtue be- 
comes more faint and indistinct. The one law to which 



126 SPENSKR. [ciiAr. 

the poet feels bound is to have twelve cantos in eaeli 
book; and to do this he is sometimes driven to what in 
later times has been called padding. One of the cantos 
of the third book is a genealogy of British kings from 
Geoffrey of Monmouth ; one of the cantos of the Legend 
of Friendship is made up of an episode describing the 
marriage of the Thames and the Medway, with an elab- 
orate catalogue of the English and Irish rivers, and the 
names of the sea-nymphs. In truth, he had exhausted his 
proper allegory, or he got tired of it. His poem became 
an elastic framework, into which he could fit whatever in- 
terested him and tempted him to composition. The grav- 
ity of the first books disappears. He passes into satire and 
caricature. We meet with Braggadochio and Trompart, 
with the discomfiture of Malecasta, with the cor.jagal trou- 
bles of Malbecco and Helenore, with tlie imitation from 
Ariosto of the Squire of Dames. He puts into verse a 
poetical physiology of the human body; he translates Lu- 
cretius, and speculates on the origin of human souls; he 
speculates, too, on social justice, and composes an argu- 
mentative refutation of the Anabaptist theories of right 
and equality among men. As the poem proceeds, he 
seems to feel himself more free to introduce what he 
pleases. Allusions to real men and events are sometimes 
clear, at other times evident, though they have now ceased 
to be intelligible to us. His disgust and resentment breaks 
out at the ways of the Court in sarcastic moralizing, or in 
pictures of dark and repulsive imagery. The characters 
and pictures of his friends furnish material for his poem ; 
he does not mind touching on the misadventures of Ra- 
legh, and even of Lord Grey, with sly humour or a word 
of candid advice. He becomes bolder in the distinct in- 
troduction of contemporary history. The defeat of Dues- 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEEXE. 127 

sa was only figuratively shown in the first portion ; in the 
second the subject is resumed. As Elizabeth is the " one 
form of many names," Gloriana, Belphoebe, Britomart, 
Mercilla, so, " under feigned colours shading a true case," 
he deals with her rival. Mary seems at one time the false 
Florimel, the creature of enchantment, stirring up strife, 
and fought for by the foolish knights whom she deceives, 
Blandamour and Paridell, the counterparts of Norfolk and 
the intriguers of 1571. At another, she is the fierce Ama- 
zonian queen, Radegund, by whom, for a moment, even 
Arthegal is brought into disgraceful thraldom, till Brit- 
omart, whom he has once fought against, delivers him. 
And, finally, the fate of the typical Duessa is that of 
the real Mary Queen of Scots described in great detail — 
a liberty in dealing with great affairs of State for which 
James of Scotland actually desired that he should be 
tried and punished.^ So Philip II. is at one time the 
Soldan, at another the Spanish monster Geryoneo, at an- 
other the fosterer of Catholic intrigues in France and Ire- 
land, Grantorto. But real names are also introduced with 
scarcely any disguise : Guizor, and Burbon, the Knight 
who throws away his shield, Henry IV., and his Lady 
Flourdelis, the Lady Beige, and* her seventeen sons : the 
Lady Irena, whom Arthegal delivers. The overthrow of 
the Armada, the English war in the Low Countries, the 
apostasy of Henry IV., the deliverance of Ireland from the "J^ 
"great wTong" of Desmond's rebellion, the giant Grantor- 
to, form, under more or less transparent allegory, great part 
of the Legend of Justice. Nay, Spenser's long -fostered 
revenge on the lady who had once scorned him, the Ros- 
alind of the Shepherd''s Calendar, the Mirahella of the 
Faerie Queene, and his own late and happy marriage in 
1 Hales' Life, Globe Edition. 



128 SPENSER. [chap. 

Ireland, arc also brouglit in to supply materials for the 
Legend of Courtesy. So multifarious is the poem, full of 
all that l)e thought, or observed, or felt ; a receptacle, with- 
out much care to avoid repetition, or to prune, correct, and 
condense, for all the abundance of his ideas, as they welled 
forth in his mind day by day. It is really a collection 
of separate tales and allegories, as much as the Arabian 
Nights^ or as its counterpart and rival of our own century, 
the Idylls of the King. As a whole, it is confusing : but 
we need not treat it as a whole. Its continued interest 
soon breaks down. But it is probably best that Spenser 
gave his mind the vague freedom which suited it, and that 
he did not make efforts to tie himself down to his pre-ar- 
ranged but too ambitious plan. We can hardly lose our 
way in it, for there is no way to lose. It is a wilderness 
in which we are left to wander. But there may be inter- 
est and pleasure in a wilderness, if we are prepared for the 
wandering. 

Still, the complexity, or, rather, the uncared-for and 
clumsy arrangement of the poem is matter which disturbs 
a reader's satisfaction, till he gets accustomed to the poet's 
way, and resigns himself to it. It is a heroic poem, in 
which the heroine, who gives her name to it, never ap- 
pears: a story, of which the basis and starting-point is 
whimsically withheld for disclosure in the last book, which 
was never written. If Ariosto's jumps and transitions 
are more audacious, Spenser's intricacy is more puzzling. 
Adventures begin which have no finish. Actors in them 
drop from the clouds, claim an interest, and we ask in 
vain what has become of them. A vein of what are mani- 
festly contemporary allusions breaks across the moral drift 
of the allegory, with an apparently distinct yet obscured 
meaning, and one of which it is the work of dissertations 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 129 

to find the key. The passion of the age was for ingen- 
ious riddling in morality as in love. And in Spenser's 
allegories we are not seldom at a loss to make out what 
and how much was really intended, amid a maze of over- 
strained analogies and over-subtle conceits, and attempts 
to hinder a too close and dangerous identification. 

Indeed, Spenser's mode of allegory, which was histor- 
ical as well as moral, and contains a good deal of history, 
if we knew it, often seems devised to throw curious read- 
ers off the scent. It was purposely baffling and hazy. A 
cliaracteristic trait was singled out. A name was trans- 
posed in anagram, like Irena, or distorted, as if by imper- 
fect pronunciation, like Burbon and Arthegal, or invented 
to express a quality, like Una, or Gloriana, or Corceca, or 
Fradubio, or adopted with no particular reason from the 
Morte (T Arthur, or any other old literature. The per- 
sonage is introduced with some feature, or amid circum- 
stances which seem for a moment to fix the meaning. 
But when we look to the sequence of history being kept 
up in the sequence of the story, we find ourselves thrown 
out. A character which fits one person puts on the marks 
of another: a likeness which we identify with one real 
person passes into the likeness of some one else. The 
real, in person, incident, institution, shades off in the 
ideal ; after showing itself by plain tokens, it turns aside 
out of its actual path of fact, and ends, as the poet thinks 
it ought to end, in victory or defeat, glory or failure. 
Prince Arthur passes from Leicester to Sidney, and then 
back again to Leicester. There are double or treble alle- 
gories ; Elizabeth is Gloriana, Belphabe, Britomart, Mer- 
cilla, perhaps Amoret ; her rival is Duessa, the false Flori- 
mel, probably the fierce temptress, the Amazon Radegund. 
Thus, what for a morpent was clear and definite, fades liko 



i:!0 SPENSER. [chap. 

the cliatiging fringe of a dispersing cloud. The character 
which we identified disappears in other scenes and ad- 
ventures, where we lose sight of all that identified it. A 
complete transformation destroys the likeness which was 
begun. There is an intentional dislocation of the parts of 
the story, when they might make it imprudently close in 
its refiection of facts or resemblance in portraiture. A 
feature is shown, a manifest allusion made, and then the 
poet starts off in other directions, to confuse and perplex 
all attempts at interpretation, which might be too particu- 
lar and too certain. This was, no doubt, merely accord- 
ing to the fashion of the time, and the habits of mind irito 
which the poet had grown. But there were often reasons 
for it, in an age so suspicious, and so dangerous to those 
who meddled with high matters of state. 

2. Another feature which is on the surface of the Faerie 
Queene, and which will displease a rea.der who has been 
trained to value what is natural and genuine, is its affec- 
tation of the language and the customs of life belonging 
to an age which 13 not its own. It is, indeed, redolent of 
the present: but it is almost avowedly an imitation of 
what was current in the days of Chaucer: of what were 
supposed to be the words, and the social ideas and condi- 
tions, of the age of chivalry. He looked back to the fash- 
ions and ideas of the Middle Ages, as Pindar sought his 
materials in the legends and customs of the Homeric 
times, and created a revival of the spirit of the age of the 
Heroes in an age of tyrants and incipient democracies.* 
The age of chivalry, in Spenser's day far distant, had yet 
left two survivals, one real, the other formal. The real 
survival was the spirit of armed adventure, which was 
never stronger or more stirring than in the gallants and 
1 Vid. Keble, Prcelect. Acad., xxiv, p. 479, 480. 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 131 

discoverers of Elizabeth's reign, the captains of the Eng- 
lish companies in the Low Countries, the audacious sail- 
ors who explored unknown oceans and plundered the 
Spaniards, the scholars and gentlemen equally ready for 
work on sea and land, like Ralegh and Sir Richard Gren- 
ville, of the " Revenge." The formal survival was the 
fashion of keeping up the trappings of knightly times, 
as we keep up Judges' wigs, court dresses, and Lord 
Mayors' shows. In actual life it was seen in pageants 
and ceremonies, in the yet lingering parade of jousts and 
tournaments, in the knightly accoutrements still worn in 
the days of the bullet and the cannon-ball. In the appa- 
ratus of the poet, as all were shepherds when he wanted 
to represent the life of peace and letters, so all were 
knights, or the foes and victims of knights, when his 
theme was action and enterprise. It was the custom that 
the Muse masked, to use Spenser's word, under these dis- 
guises; and this conventional masquerade of pastoral po- 
etry or knight-errantry was the form under which the 
poetical school that preceded the dramatists naturally ex- 
pressed their ideas. It seems to us odd that peaceful 
sheepcots and love-sick swains should stand for the world 
of the Tudors and Guises, or that its cunning state-craft 
and relentless cruelty should be represented by the gener- 
ous follies of an imaginary chivalry. But it was the fash— 
ion which Spenser found, and he accepted it. His genius 
was not of that sort which breaks out from trammels, but 
of that which makes the best of what it finds. And what- 
ever we may think of the fashion, at least he gave it new 
interest and splendour by the spirit with which he threw 
himself into it. 

The condition which he took as the groundwork of his 
poetical fabric suggested the character of his language. 



l;S2 SPENSER. [chap. 

Chaucer was then the " God of English poetry ;" his was 
the one name which filled a place apart in the history 
of English verse. Spenser was a student of Chaucer, and 
borrowed as he judged fit, not only from his vocabulary, 
but from his grammatical precedents and analogies, with 
the object of giving an appropriate colouring to what was 
to be raised as far as possible above familiar life. Besides 
this, the language was still in such an unsettled state that, 
from a man with resources like Spenser's, it naturally in- 
vited attempts to enrich and colour it, to increase its flex- 
ibility and power. The liberty of reviving old forms, 
of adopting from the language of the street and market 
homely but expressive words or combinations, of follow- 
ing in the track of convenient constructions, of venturing 
on new and bold phrases, was rightly greater in his time 
than at a later stage of the language. Many of his words, 
either invented or preserved, are happy additions; some 
which have not taken root in the language, we may re- 
gret. But it w^as a liberty which he abused. He was 
extravagant and unrestrained in his experiments on lan- 
guage. And they were made not merely to preserve or 
to invent a good expression. On his own authority he 
cuts down, or he alters a word, or he adopts a mere cor- 
rupt pronunciation, to suit a place in his metre, or because 
he wants a rime. Precedents, as Mr. Guest has said, may 
no doubt be found for each one of these sacrifices to the 
necessities of metre or rime, in some one or other living 
dialectic usage, or even in printed books — ^^ blend ''^ for 
''blind;' ''misleeke'' for ''mislike;' '' kesV' for ''cast;' 
"cherry"''' for "cherish;'' " vilde''"' for "vile;'' or even 
"waives^' for " tvaves;' because it has to rime to "jawsy 
But when they are profusely used as they are in Spen- 
ser, they argue, as critics of his own age, such as Putten- 



v.] THE FAERIE QU^ENE. 133 

ham, remarked, either want of trouble, or want of resource. 
In his impatience he is reckless in making a word which 
he wants — "fortunize," "mercified," " unblindf old," "re- 
live " — he is reckless in making one word do the duty of 
another, interchanging actives and passives, transferring 
epithets from their proper subjects. The " humbled 
grass," is the grass on which a man lies humbled : the 
"lamentable eye" is the eye which laments. " His treat- 
ment of words," says Mr. Craik, "on such occasions" — 
occasions of difficulty to his verse — " is like nothing that 
ever was seen, unless it might be Hercules breaking the 
back of the Nemean lion. He gives them any sense and 
any shape that the case may demand. Sometimes he 
merely alters a letter or two ; sometimes he twists off the 
head or the tail of the unfortunate vocable altogether. 
But this fearless, lordly, truly royal style makes one only 
feel the more how easily, if he chose, he could avoid the 
necessity of having recourse to such outrages." 

His own generation felt his license to be extreme. " In 
affecting the ancients," said Ben Jonson, " he writ no lan- 
guage." Daniel writes sarcastically, soon after the Faerie 
Queene appeared, of those who 

" Sing of knights and Palladines, 
In aged accents and untimely words." 

And to us, though students of 'the language must always 
find interest in the storehouse of ancient or invented lan- 
guage to be found in Spenser, this mixture of what is ob- 
solete or capriciously new is a bar, and not an unreasona- 
ble one, to a frank welcome at first acquaintance. Fuller 
remarks, with some slyness, that " the many Chaucerisras 
used (for I will not say, affected) by him are thought by 
the ignorant to be blemishes, known by the learned to be 



134 SPENSER. * [chap. 

beauties, in his book ; which notwithstanding had been 
more saleable, if more conformed to our modern lan- 
guage." The grotesque, though it has its place as one 
of the instruments of poetical effect, is a dangerous ele- 
ment to handle. Spenser's age was very insensible to the 
presence and the dangers of the grotesque, and he was not 
before his time in feeling what was unpleasing in incon- 
gruous mixtures. Strong in the abundant but unsifted 
learning of his day, a style of learning which in his case 
was strangely inaccurate, he not only mixed the past with 
the present, fairyland with politics, mythology with the 
most serious Christian ideas, but he often mixed together 
the very features which are most discordant, in the col- 
ours, forms, and methods by which he sought to produce 
the effect of his pictures. 

3. Another source of annoyance and disappointment 
is found in the imperfections and inconsistencies of the 
poet's standard of what is becoming to say and to write 
about. Exaggeration, diffuseness, prolixity, were the liter- 
ary diseases of the age ; an age of great excitement and 
hope, which had suddenly discovered its wealth and its 
powers, but not the rules of true economy in using them. 
With the classics open before it, and alive to much of the 
grandeur of their teaching, it was almost blind to the spirit 
of self-restraint, proportion, and simplicity which govern- 
ed the great models. It was left to a later age to discern 
these and appreciate them. This unresisted proneness to 
exaggeration produced the extravagance and the horrors of 
the Elizabethan Drama, full, as it was, nevertheless, of in- 
sight and originality. It only too naturally led the ear- 
lier Spenser astray. What Dryden, in one of his inter- 
esting critical prefaces says of himself, is true of Spenser: 
" Thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast 

/ 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 135 

upon me, that iny only difficulty is to choose or to reject ; 
to run them into verse, or to give them the other harmony 
of prose." There was in Spenser a facility for turning 
to account all material, original or borrowed, an inconti- 
nence of the descriptive faculty, which was ever ready to 
exercise itself on any object, the most unfitting and loath- 
some, as on the noblest, the purest, or the most beautiful. 
There are pictures in him which seem meant to turn our 
stomach. Worse than that, there are pictures which for 
a time rank the poet of Holiness or Temperance with the 
painters who used their great art to represent at once the 
most sacred and holiest forms, and also scenes which few 
people now like to look upon in company — scenes and 
descriptions which may, perhaps from the habits of the 
time, have been playfully and innocently produced, but 
which it is certainly not easy to dwell upon innocentl}'' 
now. And apart from these serious faults, there is con- 
tinually haunting us, amid incontestable richness, vigour, 
and beauty, a sense that the work is overdone. Spenser 
certainly did not want for humour and an eye for the ri- 
diculous. There is no want in him, either, of that power 
of epigrammatic terseness, which, in spite of its diffuse- 
ness, his age valued and cultivated. But when he gets on 
a story or a scene, he never knows where to stop. His 
duels go on stanza after stanza till there is no sound part 
left in either champion. His palaces, landscapes, pageants, 
feasts, are taken to pieces in all their parts, and all these 
parts are likened to some other things. " His abundance," 
says Mr. Craik, " is often oppressive ; it is like loading* 
among unmown grass^ And he drowns us in words. His 
abundant and incongruous adjectives may sometimes, per- 
haps, startle us unfairly, because their associations and sug- 
gestions have quite altered ; but very often they are the 



136 SPENSER. [chap. 

idle outpouring of an unrestrained affluence of language. 
The impression remains that lie wants a due perception 
of the absurd, the unnatural, the unnecessary ; that he 
docs not care if he makes us smile, or does not know 
how to help it, when he tries to make us admire or sym- 
pathize. 

Under this head comes a feature which the "charity of 
history " may lead us to treat as simple exaggeration, but 
which often suggests something less pardonable, in the 
great characters, political or literary, of Elizabeth's reign. 
This was the gross, shameless, lying flattery paid to the 
Queen. There is really nothing like it in history. It is 
unique as a phenomenon that proud, able, free-spoken 
men, with all their high instincts of what was noble and 
true, with all their admiration of the Queen's high quali- 
ties, should have offered it, even as an unmeaning custom ; 
and that a proud and free-spoken people should not, in the 
very genuineness of their pride in her and their loyalty, 
have received it with shouts of derision and disgust. The 
flattery of Roman emperors and Roman Popes, if as extrav- 
agant, was not so personal. Even Louis XIV. was not cel- 
ebrated in his dreary old age as a model of ideal beauty 
and a paragon of romantic perfection. It was no worship 
of a secluded and distant object of loyalty : the men who 
thus flattered knew perfectly well, often by painful expe- 
rience, what Elizabeth was : able, indeed, high-spirited, suc- 
cessful, but ungrateful to her servants, capricious, vain, ill- 
tempered, unjust, and in her old age ugly. And yet the 
•Gloriana of the Faerie Queene, the Empress of all noble- 
ness — Belphoebe, the Princess of all sweetness and beauty 
— Britomart, the armed votaress of all purity — Mercilla, 
the lady of all compassion and grace — were but the reflec- 
tions of the language in which it was then agreed upon by 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 137 

some of the greatest of Englishmen to speak, and to be 
supposed to think, of the Queen. 

II. But when all these faults have been admitted, faults 
of design and faults of execution — and when it is admitted, 
further, that there is a general want of reality, substance, 
distinctness, and strength in the personages of the poem 
— that, con] pared with the contemporary drama, Spenser's 
knights and ladies and villains are thin and ghost-like, and 
that, as Daniel says, he 

" Paints shadows in imaginary lines — " 

it yet remains that our greatest poets sinpe his day have 
loved him and delighted in him. He had Shakespere's 
praise. Cowley was made a poet by reading him. Dry- 
den calls Milton "the poetical son of Spenser:" "Milton," 
he writes, " has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his 
original." Dryden's own homage to him is frequent and 
generous. Pope found as much pleasure in the Faerie 
Queene in his later years as he had found in reading it 
when he was twelve years old: and what Milton, Dryden, 
and Pope admired, Wordsworth too found full of noble- 
ness, purity, and sweetness. / What is it that gives the 
Faerie Queene its hold on those who appreciate the rich- 
ness and music of English language, and who in temper 
and moral standard are quick to respond to Euglish man- 
liness and tenderness? The spell is to be found mainly 
in three things — (l) in the quaint stateliness of Spenser's 
imaginary world and its representatives ; (2) in the beauty 
and melody of his numbers, the abundance and grace of 
his poetic ornaments, in the recurring and haunting rhythm 
of numberless passages, in which thought and imagery and 
language and melody are interwoven in one perfect and 
satisfying harmony ; and (;V) in the intrinsic nobleness of 



\ 



138 :>PENSER. [chap. 

his general aim, bis conception of human life, at once so 
exacting and so indulgent, his high ethical principles and 
ideals, his unfeigned honour for all that is pure and brave 
and unseltish and tender, his generous estimate of what 
is due from man to man of service, affection, and fidelity. 
His fictions embodied truths of character which, with all 
their shadowy incompleteness, were too real and too beau- 
tiful to lose their charm with time. 

1. Spenser accepted from his age the quaint stateliness 
which is characteristic of his poem. His poetry is not 
simple and direct like that of the Greeks. It has not the 
exquisite finish and felicity of the best of the Latins. It 
has not the massive grandeur, the depth, the freedom, the 
shades and subtle complexities of feeling and motive, 
which the English dramatists found by going straight to 
nature. It has tlie stateliness of highly artificial condi- 
tions of society, of the Court, the pageant, the tournament, 
as opposed to the majesty of the great events in human 
life and history, its real vicissitudes, its catastrophes, its 
tragedies, its revolutions, its sins. Throughout the pro- 
longed crisis of Elizabeth's reign, her gay and dashing 
courti6rs, and even her serious masters of affairs, persisted 
in pretending to look on the world in which they lived as 
if through the side-scenes of a masque, and relieved against 
the background of a stage-curtain. Human life, in those 
days, counted for little ; fortune, honour, national existence 
hung in the balance ; the game was one in which the heads 
of kings and queens and great statesmen were the stakes 
— yet the players could not get out of their stiff and con- 
strained costume, out of their artificial and fantastic fig- 
ments of thought, out of their conceits and affectations of 
language. They carried it, with all their sagacity, with all 
their intensity of purpose, to the council-board and the 



v.j THE FAEKIE QUEENE. 139 

judgment-seat. They carried it to the scaffold. The con- 
ventional supposition was that at the Court, though every- 
one knew better, all was perpetual sunshine, perpetual hol- 
iday, perpetual triumph, perpetual love-making. It was 
the happy reign of the good and wise and lovely. It was 
the discomfiture of the base, the faithless, the wicked, the 
traitors. This is what is reflected in Spenser's poem ; at 
once, its stateliness, for th^re was no want of grandeur and 
magnificence in the public scene ever before Spenser's im- 
agination ; and its quaintness, because the whole outward 
apparatus of representation was borrowed from what was 
past, or from what did not exist, and implied surround- 
ing circumstances in ludicrous contrast with fact, and men 
taught themselves to speak in character, and prided them- 
selves on keeping it up by substituting for the ordinary 
language of life and emotion a cumbrous and involved 
indirectness of speech. 

And yet that quaint stateliness is not without its attrac- 
tions. We have indeed to fit ourselves for it. But when 
we have submitted to its demands on our imagination, it 
carries us along as much as the fictions of the stage. The 
splendours of the artificial are not the splendours of the 
natural ; yet the artificial has its splendours, which im- 
press and captivate and repay. The grandeur of Spenser's 
poem is a grandeur like that of a great spectacle, a great 
array of the forces of a nation, a great series of military 
effects, a great ceremonial assemblage of all that is highest 
and most eminent in a country, a coronation, a royal mar- 
riage, a triumph, a funeral. So, though Spenser's knights 
and ladies do what no men ever could do, and speak what 
no man ever spoke, the procession rolls forward with a 
pomp which never forgets itself, and with an inexhaustible 
succession of circumstance, fantas\', and incident. Nor is 



HO SPENSER. [chap. 

it always solemn and high-pitched. Its gravity is relieved 
from time to time with the ridiculous figure or character, 
the ludicrous incident, the jests and antics of the buffoon. 
It has been said that Spenser never smiles. He not only 
smiles, with amusement or sly irony; he wrote what he 
must have laughed at as he wrote, and meant us to laugh 
at. He did not describe with a grave face the terrors and 
misadventures of the boaster Bra^'gadochio and his Squire, 
whether or not a caricature of the Duke of Alencon and 
his "gentleman," the "petit singe," Simier. He did not 
write with a grave face the Irish row about the false 
Florimel (IV. 5) ; 

" Then unto Satyran she was adjudged, 
Wlio was right glad to gaine so goodly meed : 
But Blandaniour thereat full greatly grudged, 
And litle prays'd his labours evill speed. 
That for to winne the saddle lost the steed. 
Ne lesse thereat did Paridell eomplaine. 
And thought t' appeale from that whieh was decreed 
To single eonibat with Sir Satyrane : 
Thereto him Ate stird, new discord to niaintaine. 

" And eke, with these, full many other Knights 
She through her wicked working did incense 
Her to demaund and chalenge as their rights. 
Deserved for their porils recompense. 
Amongst the rest, with boastful! vaine pretense, 
Stept Braggadochio forth, and as his thrall 
Her claym'd, by him in battell wonne long sens: 
Whereto her selfe he did to witnesse call : 
Who, being askt, accordingly confessed all. 

" Thereat exceeding wroth was Satyran ; 
And wa-oth with Satyran was Blandaraour ; 
And wroth with Blandainour was Erivan ; 
And at them both Sir Paridell did loure. 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 141 

So all together stird up strif ull stoure, 

And readie were new battell to darraine. 

Each one profest to be her paramoure, 

And vow'd with speare and shield it to maintaine; 

Ne Judges powre, ue reasons rule, mote them restraine." 

Nor the behaviour of the " rascal many " at the sight of 
the dead Dragon (I. 12) : 

"And after all the raskall many ran^ 
Heaped together in rude rablement, 
To see the face of that victorious man, 
Whom all admired as from heaven sentj 
And gazd upon with gaping wonderment ; 
But when they came where that dead Dragon lay, 
Stretcht on the ground in monstrous large extent, 
The sight with ydle feare did them dismay, 
Ne durst approch him nigh to touch, or once assay. 

"Some feard, and fledd; some feard, and well it fayned; 
One, that would wiser seeme then all the rest, 
Warnd him not touch, for yet perhaps remaynd 
Some lingring life within his hollow brest. 
Or in his wombe might lurke some hidden nest 
Of many Dragonettes, his f ruitfull seede : 
Another saide, that in his eyes did rest 
Yet sparckling fyre, and badd thereof take heed ; 
Another said, he saw him move his eyes indeed. 

" One mother, whenas her foolehardy chyld 
Did come too neare, and with his talants play, 
Halfe dead through feare, her litle babe revyld, 
And to her gossibs gan in counsell say ; 
' How can I tell, but that his talants may 
Yet scratch my sonne, or rend his tender hand ?' 
So diversly them selves in vaine they fray ; 
"Whiles some more bold to measure him nigh stand, 
To prove how many acres he did spred of land." 



142 SPENSER. [chap. 

And his humour is not the less real that it affects seri- 
ous argument, in the excuse which he urges for his fairy 
tales (il. 1) : 

" Right well I wote, most mighty Soveraine, 
That all this famous antique history 
Of some th' aboundance of an ydle braine 
Will judged be, and painted forgery, 
Rather then matter of just memory ; 
Sith none that breatheth living aire dees know 
Where is that happy land of Faery, 
Which I so much doe vaunt, yet no where show, 
But vouch antiquities, which no body can know. 

" But let that man with better sence advize. 
That of the world least part to us is red ; 
And daily how through hardy enterprize 
Many great Regions are discovered, 
Which to late age were never mentioned. 
Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru ? 
Or who in venturous vessell measured 
The Amazon huge river, now found trew? 
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever vew ? 

" Yet all these were, when no man did them know, 
Yet have from wisest ages hidden beene ; 
And later times thinges more unknoWne shall show. 
Why then should witlesse man so much misweene, 
That nothing is but that which he hath scene ? 
What if within the Moones fayre shining spheare. 
What if in every other starre unseene 
Of other worldes he happily should heare. 
He wonder would much more ; yet such to some appeare." 

The general effect is almost always lively and rich : all 
is buoyant and full of movement. That it is also odd, 
that we see strange costumes and hear a language often 
formal and obsolete, that we are asked to take for granted 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 143 

some very unaccustomed supposition and extravagant as- 
sumption, does not trouble us more than the usages and 
sights, so strange to ordinary civil life, of a camp, or a 
royal levee. All is in keeping, whatever may be the de- 
tails of the pageant ; they harmonize with the effect of the 
whole, like the gargoyles and quaint groups in a Gothic 
building harmonize with its general tone of majesty and 
subtle beauty ; — nay, as ornaments, in themselves of bad 
taste, like much of the ornamentation of the Renaissance 
styles, yet find a not unpleasing place in compositions 
grandly and nobly designed : 

" So discord oft in music makes the sweeter lay." 

Indeed, it is curious how much of real variety is got out 
of a limited number of elements and situations. The 
spectacle, though consisting only of knights, ladies, dwarfs, 
pagans, " salvage men," enchanters, and monsters, and oth- 
er well-worn machinery of the books of chivalry, is ever 
new, full of vigour and fresh images, even if, as sometimes 
happens, it repeats itself. There is a majestic uncon- 
sciousness of all violations of probability, and of the 
strangeness of the combinations which it unrolls before us. 
2. But there is not only stateliness : there is sweetness 
and beauty. Spenser's perception of beauty of all kinds 
was singularly and characteristically quick and sympa- 
thetic. It was one of his great gifts ; perhaps the most 
special and unstinted. Except Shakespere, who had it 
with other and greater gifts, no one in that time approach- 
ed to Spenser, in feeling the presence of that commanding 
and mysterious idea, compounded of so many things, yet 
of which the true secret escapes us still, to which we give 
the name of beauty. A beautiful scene, a beautiful per- 
son, a beautiful poem, a mind and character with that com- 



144 SPENSER. [chap. 

binatiou of charms, which, for want of another word, wc 
call by that half-spiritual, half-material word " beautiful," 
at once set his imagination at work to respond to it and 
reflect it. His means of reflecting it were as abundant as 
his sense of it was keen. They were only too abundant. 
They often betrayed him by their affluence and wonderful 
readiness to meet his call. Say what we w ill, and a great 
deal may be said, of his lavish profu.sion, his heady and 
uncontrolled excess, in the richness of picture and imagery 
in which he indulges — still, there it lies before us, like the 
most gorgeous of summer gardens, in the glory and brill- 
iancy of its varied blooms, in the wonder of its strange 
forms of life, in the changefulness of its exquisite and de- 
licious scents. No one who cares for poetic beauty can 
be insensible to it. He may criticise it. He may have 
too much of it. He may prefer something more severe 
and chastened. He may observe on the waste of wealth 
and power. He may blame the prodigal expense of lan- 
guage, and the long spaces which the poet takes up to 
produce his effect. He may often dislike or distrust the 
moral aspect of the poet's impartial sensitiveness to all out- 
ward beauty — the impartiality which makes him throw 
all his strength into his pictures of Acrasia's Bower of 
Bliss, the Garden of Adonis, and Busirane's Masque of Cu- 
pid. But there is no gainsaying the beauty which never 
fails and disappoints, open the poem where you will. 
There is no gainsaying its variety, often so unexpected and 
novel. Face to face with the Epicurean idea of beauty 
and pleasure is the counter - charm of purity, truth, and 
duty. Many poets have done justice to each one sepa 
rately. Few have shown, with such equal power, why it is 
that both have their roots in man's divided nature, and 
struo-nrle, ns it woro, for the mastery. Which can be said 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 145 

to be the most exquisite in all beauty of imagination, of 
refined language, of faultless and matchless melody, of 
these two passages, in which the same image is used for 
the most opposite purposes ; — first, in that song of temp- 
tation, the sweetest note in that description of Acrasia s 
Bower of Bliss, which, as a picture of the spells of pleas- 
ure, has never been surpassed ; and next, to represent that 
stainless and glorious purity which is the professed object 
of his admiration and homage. In both the beauty of the 
rose furnishes the theme of the poet's treatment. In the 
first, it is the " lovely lay " which meets the knight of 
Temperance amid the voluptuousness which he is come to 
assail and punish : 

" The whiles some one did chaimt this lovely lay : 
Ah ! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see, 
In springing flowre the image of thy day. 
Ah ! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee 
Doth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee, 
That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may. 
Lo ! see soone after how more bold and free 
Her bared bosome she doth broad display ; 
Lo ! see soone after how she fades and falls away. 

" So passeth, in the passing of a day, 
Of mortall life the leaf e, the bud, the flowre ; 
Ne more doth florish after first decay, 
That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre 
Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre. 
Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime, 
For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre; 
Gather the Rose of love whilest yet is time, 
Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equall crime." 

In the other, it images the power of the will — that pow- 
er over circumstance and the storms of passion, to com- 

7* 



146 SPENSER. [chap. 

raand obedience to reason and the moral law, wliicli Mil- 
ton sung so magnificently in Comus : 

" That daintie Rose, the daughter of her Morne, 
More deare then life she tendered, whose flowre 
The girlond of her honour did adorne : 
Ne suffred she the Middayes scorching powre, 
Ne the sharp Northerne wind thereon to showre ; 
But lapped up her silken leaves most chayre, 
When so the froward skye began to lowre ; 
But, soone as calmed was the cliristall ayj-e, 
She did it fayre dispred and let to florish fayre. 

" Eternall God, in his almightie powre, 
To make ensample of his heavenly grace. 
In Paradize wliylome did plant this flowre ; 
Whence he it fetclit out of her native place, 
' And did in stocke of earthly flesh en race. 
That mortal 1 men her glory should admyre. 
In gentle Ladies breste, and bounteous race 
Of woman kind, it fayrcst Flowre doth spyre, 
And beareth fruit of honour and all chast desyre. 

" Fayre ympes of beautie, whose bright shining beames 
Adorne the worlde with like to heavenly light, 
And to your willes both royalties and Reames 
Subdew, through conquest of your wondrous might. 
With this fayre flowre your goodly girlonds dight 
Of chastity and vertue virginall. 
That shall embellish more your beautie bright. 
And crowne your heades with heavenly coronall. 
Such as the Angels weare before God's tribunall !" 

This sense of beauty and command of beautiful expres- 
sion is not seen only in the sweetness of which both these 
passages are examples. Its range is wide. Spenser had 
in his nature, besides sweetness, his full proportion of the 
stern and high manliness of his generation ; indeed, he 
was not without its severity, its hardness, its unconsidering 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 147 

and cruel harshness, its conteniptuous indifference to suf- 
fering and misery when on the wrong side. Noble and 
heroic ideals captivate him by their attractions. He kin- 
dles naturally and genuinely at what proves and draws out 
men's courage, their self-command, their self-sacrifice. He 
sympathizes as profoundly with the strangeness of their 
condition, with the sad surprises in their history and fate, 
as he gives himself up with little restraint to what is 
charming and even intoxicating in it. He can moralize 
with the best in terse and deep-reaching apophthegms of 
melancholy or even despairing experience. He can appre- 
ciate the mysterious depths and awful outlines of theology 
— of what our own age can see nothing in, but a dry and 
scholastic dogmatism. His great contemporaries w^ere — 
more, perhaps, than the men of any age — many-sided. He 
shared their nature ; and he used all that he had of sensi- 
tiveness and of imaginative and creative power, in bring- 
ing out its manifold aspects, and sometimes contradictory 
feelings and aims. Not that beauty, even varied beauty, 
15 the uninterrupted attribute of his work. It alternates 
with much that no indulgence can call beautiful. It 
passes but too easily into what is commonplace, or forced, 
or unnatural, or extravagant, or careless and poor, or really 
coarse and bad. He was a negligent corrector. He only 
at times gave himself the trouble to condense and concen- 
trate. But for all this, the Faerie Queene glows and is' 
ablaze with beauty ; and that beauty is so rich, so real, 
and so uncommon, that for its sake the severest readers of ; 
Spenser have pardoned much that is discordant with it — ' 
much that in the reading has wasted their time and disap- 
pointed them. 

There is one portion of the beauty of the Faerie Queene 
which in its perfection and fulness had never yet been 



us SPENSER. [chap. 

leMclicd ill English poetry. This whs the imisie and mel- 
<jdy of his verse. It was this wonderful, almost unfailing 
sweetness of numbers which probably as much as anything 
set the Faerie Queene at once above all contemporary poe- 
try. The English language is really a musical one, and, 
say what people will, the English ear is very susceptible to 
the infinite delicacy and suggestiveness of musical rliythm 
and cadence. Spenser found the secret of it. The art 
has had many and consummate masters since, as different 
in their melody as in their thoughts from Spenser. And 
others at the time, Shakespcre pre-eminently, heard, only 
a little later, the same grandeur and the same subtle beau- 
ty in the sounds of their mother-tongue, only waiting the 
artist's skill to be combined and harmonized into strains 
of mysterious fascination. But Spenser was the first to 
show that he had acquired a command over what had 
hitherto been heard only in exquisite fragments, passing 
too soon into roughness and confusion. It would be too 
much to say that his cunning never fails, that his ear is 
never dull or off its guard. But when the length and 
magnitude of the composition are considered, with the re- 
straints imposed by the new nine-line stanza, however con- 
venient it may have been, the vigour, the invention, the vol- 
ume and rush of language, and the keenness and truth of ear 
amid its diversified tasks, are indeed admirable which could 
keep up so prolonged and so majestic a stream of original 
and varied poetical melody. If his stanzas are monoto- 
nous, it is with the grand monotony of the sea-shore, where 
billow follows billow, each swelling diversely, and broken 
into different curves and waves upon its mounting surface, 
till at last it falls over, and spreads and rushes up in a last 
long line of foam upon the beach. 

3. But all this is but the outside shell and the fancy 



V.J THE FAERIE QUEENE. 149 

framework in which th.e substance of the poem is enclosed. 
Its substance is the poet's philosophy of life. It shadows 
forth, in type and parable, his ideal of the perfection of 
the human character, with its special features, its trials, its 
achievements. There were two accepted forms in poetry • 
in which this had been done by poets. One was undet*\ 
the image of warfare ; the other was under the image of a \ 
journey or voyage. Spenser chose the former, as Dante \ 
and Bunyan chose the latter. Spenser looks on the scene \ 
of the world as a continual battle-field. It was such, in 
fact, to his experience in Ireland, testing the mettle of char- 
acter, its loyalty, its sincerity, its endurance. His picture 
of character is by no means painted with sentimental ten- 
derness. He portrays it in the rough work of the strug- 
gle and the toil, always hardly tested by trial, often over- 
matched, deceived, defeated, and even delivered by its own 
default to disgrace and captivit}^ He had full before his 
eyes what abounded in the society of his day, often in 
its noblest representatives — the strange perplexing mixt- 
ure of the purer with the baser elements, in the high-tem- 
pered and aspiring activity of his time. But it was an 
ideal of character wdiich had in it high aims and serious 
purposes, which was armed with fortitude and strength, 
which could recover itself after failure and defeat. 

The unity of a story, or an allegory — that chain and 
backbone of continuous interest, implying a progress and 
leading up to a climax, whicli holds together the great 
poems of the world, the Iliad and Odysi^eij, the ^neid, 
the Commedia, the Paradise Lost, the Jerusalem Delivered 
— this is wanting in the Faerie Queene. The unity is one ' 
of character and its ideal. That character of the com- 
pleted man, raised above what is poor and low, and gov- 
erned by noble tempers and pure principles, has in Spenser 



150 SPENSER. [niAi-. 

two conspicuous elements. In the first place, it is based 
on manliness. In the personages which illustrate the dif- 
ferent virtues — Holiness, Justice, Courtesy, and the rest — 
the distinction is not in nicely discriminated features or 
shades of expression, but in the trials and the occasions 
which call forth a particular action or effort : yet the 
manliness which is at the foundation of all that is good in 
them is a universal quality common to them all, rooted 
and imbedded in the governing idea or standard of moral 
character in the poem. It is not merely courage, it is not 
merely energy, it is not merely strength. It is the quali- 
ty of soul which frankly accepts the conditions in human 
life, of labour, of obedience, of effort, of unequal success, 
which does not quarrel with them or evade them, but takes 
for granted with unquestioning alacrity that man is called 
— by his call to high aims and destiny — to a continual 
struggle with difficulty, with pain, with evil, and makes it 
the point of honour not to be dismayed or wearied out by 
them. It is a cheerful and serious willingness for hard 
work and endurance, as being inevitable and very bearable 
necessities, together with even a pleasure in encountering 
trials which put a man on his mettle, an enjoyment of the 
contest and the risk, even in play. It is the quality which 
seizes on the paramount idea of duty, as something which 
leaves a man no choice ; which despises and breaks through 
the inferior considerations and motives — trouble, uncer- 
tainty, doubt, curiosity — which hang about and impede 
duty ; which is impatient with the idleness and childish- 
ness of a life of mere amusement, or mere looking on, of 
continued and self-satisfied levity, of vacillation, of clever 
and ingenious trifling. Spenser's manliness is quite con- 
sistent with long pauses of rest, with intervals of change, 
with great craving for enjoyment — nay, with great lapses 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 151 

from its ideal, with great mixtures of selfishness, with 
coarseness, with licentiousness, with injustice and inhuman- 
ity. It may be fatally diverted into bad channels; it may 
degenerate into a curse and scourge to the world. But it 
stands essentially distinct from the nature which shrinks 
from difficult}^, which is appalled at effort, which has no 
thought of making an impression on things around it, 
which is content with passively receiving influences and 
distinguishing between emotions, which feels no call to ex- 
ert itself, because it recognizes no aim valuable enough to 
rouse it, and no obligation strong enough to command it. 
In the character of his countrymen round him, in its high- 
est and in its worst features, in its noble ambition, its dar- 
ing enterprise, its self-devotion, as well as in its pride, its 
intolerance, its fierce self-will, its arrogant claims of superi- 
ority — moral, political, religious — Spenser saw the example 
of that strong and resolute manliness which, once set on 
great things, feared nothing — neither toil nor disaster nor 
danger — in their pursuit. Naturally and unconsciously, he 
laid it at the bottom of all his portraitures of noble and 
virtuous achievement in the Faerie Queene. 

All Spenser's "virtues" spring from a root of manli- 
ness. Strength, simplicity of aim, elevation of spirit, cour- 
age are presupposed as their necessary conditions. But 
they have with him another condition as universal. They 
all grow and are nourished from the soil of love ; the love 
of beauty, the love and service of fair women. This, of 
course, is a survival from the ages of chivalry, an inheri- 
tance bequeathed from the minstrels of France, Italy, and 
Germany to the rising poetry of Europe. Spenser's types 
of manhood are imperfect without the idea of an absorb- 
ing and overmastering passion of love; without a devo- 
tion, as to the principal and most worthy object of life, to 



152 SPENSER. [chap. 

the service of a beautiful lady, and to winning her affec- 
tion and grace. The influence of this view of life comes 
out in numberless ways. Love comes on the scene in 
shapes which are exquisitely beautiful, in all its purity, its 
tenderness, its unselfishness. But the claims of its all-rul- 
ing and irresistible might are also only too readily verified 
in the passions of men ; in the follies of love, its entangle- 
ments, its mischiefs, its foulness. In one shape or another 
it meets us at every turn ; it is never absent ; it is the mo- 
tive and stimulant of the whole activity of the poem. The 
picture of life held up before us is the literal rendering of 
Coleridge's lines : 

" All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 
Whatever stirs this mortal frame, 
Are all but ministers of Love, 

And feed his sacred flame." 

We still think with Spenser about the paramount place of 
manliness, as the foundation of all worth in human char- 
acter. We have ceased to think with him about the right- 
ful supremacy of love, even in the imaginative conception 
of human life. We have ceased to recognize in it the 
public claims of almost a religion, which it has in Spenser. 
Love will ever play a great part in human life to the end 
of time. It will be an immense element in its happiness, 
perhaps a still greater one in its sorrows, its disasters, its 
tragedies. It is still an immense power in shaping and 
colouring it, both in fiction and reality ; in the family, in 
the romance, in the fatalities and the prosaic ruin of vul- 
gar fact. But the place given to it by Spenser is to our 
thoughts and feelings even ludicrously extravagant. An 
enormous change has taken place in the ideas of society 
on this point : it is one of the things which make a wide 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 163 

chasm between centuries and generations which yet are of 
" the same passions," and have in temper, tradition, and 
language so much in common. The ages of the Courts 
of Love, whom Chaucer reflected, and whose ideas passed 
on through liim to Spenser, are to us simply strange and 
abnormal states through which society has passed, to us 
beyond understanding and almost belief. The perpetual 
love-making, as one of the first duties and necessities of 
a noble life, the space which it must fill in the cares and 
thoughts of all gentle and high-reaching spirits, the unre- 
strained language of admiration and worship, the unre- , 
strained yielding to the impulses, the anxieties, the pitiable / 
despair and agonies of love, the subordination to it of all/ 
other pursuits and aims, the weeping and wailing and self- 
torturing which it involves, all this is so far apart front 
what we know of actual life, the life not merely of work 
and business, but the life of affection, and even of passion, 
that it makes the picture of which it is so necessary a 
part seem to us in the last degree unreal, unimaginable, 
grotesquely ridiculous. The quaint love sometimes found 
among children, so quickly kindled, so superficial, so vio- 
lent in its language and absurd in its plans, is transferred 
with the utmost gravity to the serious proceedings of the 
wise and good. In the highest characters it is chasten- 
ed, refined, purified : it appropriates, indeed, language due 
only to the divine, it almost simulates idolatry, yet it be- 
longs to the best part of man's nature. But in the lower 
and average characters it is not so respectable ; it is apt 
to pass into mere toying pastime and frivolous love of 
pleasure : it astonishes us often by the readiness with 
which it displays an aflinity for the sensual and impure, 
the corrupting and debasing sides of the relations between 

the sexes. But however it appears, it is throughout a very 
L 



154 SPENSER. [chap. 

great affair, not merely with certain persons, or under cer- 
tain circumstances, but with every one : it obtrudes itself 
in public, as the natural and recognized motive of plans of 
life and trials of strength ; it is the great spur of enter- 
prise, and its highest and most glorious reward. A world 
of which this is the law, is not even in fiction a world 
which we can conceive possible, or with which experience 
enables us to sympathize. 

It is, of course, a purely artificial and conventional read- 
ing of the facts of human life and feeling. Such conven- 
tional readings and renderings belong in a measure to all 
art ; but in its highest forms they are corrected, inter- 
preted, supplemented by the presence of interspersed reali- 
ties which every one recognizes. But it was one of Spen- 
ser's disadvantages, that two strong influences combined 
to entangle him in this fantastic and grotesque way of ex- 
hibiting the play and action of the emotions of love. This 
all-absorbing, all-embracing passion of love, at least this 
way of talking about it, was the fashion of the Court, 
further, it was the fashion of poetry, which he inherited ; 
and he was not the man to break through the strong 
bands of custom and authority. In very much he was 
Kn imitator. He took what he found ; what was his own 
was his treatment of it. He did not trouble himself with 
ijiconsistencies, or see absurdities and incongruities. Hab- 
it and familiar language made it not strange that in the 
Court of Elizabeth the most high-flown sentiments should 
be in every one's mouth about the sublimities and refine- 
ments of love, while every one was busy with keen ambi- 
tion and unscrupulous intrigue. The same blinding pow- 
er kept him from seeing the monstrous contrast between 
the clainas of the queen to be the ideal of womanly purity 
— claims recognized and echoed in ten thousand extrava- 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 156 

gHiit compliments — and the real licentiousness common all 
round her among her favourites. All these strange con- 
tradictions, which surprise and shock us, Spenser assumed 
as natural. He built up his fictions on them, as the dram- 
atist built on a basis which, though more nearly approach- 
ing to real life, yet differed widely from it in many of its 
preliminary and collateral suppositions ; or as the novelist 
builds up his on a still closer adherence to facts and expe- 
rience. In this matter Spenser appears with a kind of 
double self. At one time he speaks as one penetrated and 
inspired by the highest and purest ideas of love, and filled 
with aversion and scorn for the coarser forms of passion — 
for what is ensnaring and treacherous, as well as for what 
is odious and foul. At another, he puts forth all his pow- 
er to bring out its most dangerous and even debasing as- 
pects in highly coloured pictures, which none could paint 
>iithout keen sympathy with what he takes such pains to 
> flake vivid and fascinating. The combination is not like 
tuything modern, for both the elements are in Spenser so 
inquestionably and simply genuine. Our modern poets 
are, with all their variations in this respect, more homoge- 
neous ; and where one conception of love and beauty has 
taken hold of a man, the other does not easily come in. 
It is impossible to imagine Wordsw^orth dwelling with zest 
on visions and imagery, on which Spenser has lavished all 
his riches. There can be no doubt of Byron's real habits 
of thought and feeling on subjects of this kind, even when 
his language for the occasion is the chastest ; we detect in 
it the mood of the moment, perhaps spontaneous, perhaps 
put on, but in contradiction to the whole movement of the 
man's ti-ue nature. But Spenser's words do not ring hol- 
low. With a kind of unconsciousness and innocence, which 
we now find hard to understand, and which, perhaps, be- 



156 SPENSER. [chap. 

longs to the early childhood or boyhood of a literature, 
he paseos abruptly from one standard of thought and feel- 
ing to another ; and is quite as much in earnest when he 
is singing the pure joys of chastened affections, as he is 
when he is writing with almost riotou" luxuriance what 
we are at this day ashamed to read. Tardily, indeed, he 
appears to have acknowledged the contradiction. At the 
instance of two noble ladies of the Court, he composed 
two Hymns of Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, to 
"retract" and "reform" two earlier ones composed in 
praise of earthly love and beauty. But, characteristically, 
he published the two pieces together, side by side in the 
same volume. 

In the Faerie Queene, Spenser has brought out, not the 
image of the great Gloriana, but in its various aspects a 
form of character which was then just coming on the 
stage of the world, and which has played a great part in 
it since. As he has told us, he aimed at presenting be- 
fore us, in the largest sense of the word, the English gen- 
tleman. It was, as a whole, a new character in the world. 
It had not really existed in the days of feudalism and 
chivalry, though features of it had appeared, and its de- 
scent was traced from those times : but they were too wild 
and coarse, too turbulent and disorderly, for a character 
which, however ready for adventure and battle, looked to 
peace, refinement, order, and law as the true conditions of 
its perfection. In the days of Elizabeth it was beginning 
to fill a large place in English life. It was formed amid 
the increasing cultivation of the nation, the increasing va- 
rieties of public service, the awakening responsibilities to 
duty and calls to self-command. Still making much of 
the prerogative of noble blood and family honours, it was 
something independent of nobility and beyond it. A no- 



v.] THE FAERtE QtJEENE. 15V 

blemaii iiiight have in liiiii the making of a gentleman : 
but it was the man himself of whom the gentleman was 
made. Great birth, even great capacity, were not enough; 
there must be added a new delicacy of conscience, a new 
appreciation of what is beautiful and worthy of honour, a 
new measure of the strength and nobleness of self-control, 
of devotion to unselfish interests. This idea of manhood, 
based not only on force and courage, but on truth, on 
refinement, on public spirit, on soberness and modesty, 
on consideration for others, was taking possession of the 
younger generation of Elizabeth's middle years. Of course 
the idea was very imperfectly apprehended, still more im- 
perfectly realized. But it was something which on the 
same scale had not been yet, and which was to be the 
seed of something greater. It was to grow into those 
strong, simple, noble characters, pure in aim and devoted 
to duty, the Falklands, the Ilampdens, who amid so much 
evil form such a remarkable feature in the Civil Wars, 
both on the Royalist and the Parliamentary sides. It was 
to grow into that high type of cultivated English nature, 
in the present and the last century, common both to its 
monarchical and its democratic embodiments, than which, 
with all its faults and defects, our western civilization has 
produced few things more admirable. 

There were three distinguished men of that time, who 
one after another were Spenser's friends and patrons, and 
who were men in whom he saw realized his conceptions of 
human excellence and nobleness. They were Sir Philip 
Sidney, Lord Grey of Wilton, and Sir Walter Ralegh : and 
the Faerie Queene reflects, as in a variety of separate mir- 
rors and spiritualized forms, the characteristics of these 
men and of such as they. It reflects their conflicts, their 
temptations, their weaknesses, the evils they fought with. 



158 SPENSER. [chap. 

the superiority with which they towered over meaner and 
poorer natures. Sir Philip Sidney may be said to have 
been the first typical example in English society of the 
true gentleman. The charm which attracted men to him 
in life, the fame which he left behind him, are not to be 
accounted for simply by his accomplishments as a courtier, 
a poet, a lover of literature, a gallant soldier; above all 
this, there was something not found in the strong or brill- 
iant men about him, a union and harmony of all high 
qualities differing from any of them separately, which 
gave a fire of its own to his literary enthusiasm, and a 
sweetness of its own to liis courtesy. Spenser's admira- 
tion for that bright but short career was strong and last- 
ing. Sidney was to him a verification of what he aspired 
to and imagined ; a pledge that he was not dreaming, in 
portraying Prince Arthur's greatness of soul, the religious 
chivalry of the Red Cross Knight of Holiness, the manly 
purity and self-control of Sir Guyon. It is too much to 
say that in Prince Arthur, the hero of the poem, he always 
intended Sidney. In the first place, it is clear that un- 
der that character Spenser in places pays compliments to 
Leicester, in whose service he began life, and whose claims 
on his homage he ever recognized. Prince Arthur is cer- 
tainly Leicester, in the historical passages in the Fifth Book 
relating to the war in the Low Countries in 1576: and 
no one can be meant but Leicester in the bold allusion in 
the First Book (ix. 17) to Elizabeth's supposed thoughts of 
marrying hiiu. In the next place, allegory, like caricature, 
is not bound to make the same person and the same image 
always or perfectly coincide ; and Spenser makes full use 
of this liberty. But when he was painting the picture of 
the Kingly AVarrior, in whom was to be summed up in a 
magnificent unity the diversified graces of other men, and 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENE. 159 

who was to be ever ready to help and support his fellows 
in their hour of need, and in their conflict with evil, he 
certainly had before his mind the well -remembered lin- 
eaments of Sidney's high and generous nature. And he 
further dedicated a separate book, the last that he com- 
pleted, to the celebration of Sidney's special " virtue " of 
Courtesy. The martial strain of the poem changes once 
more to the pastoral of the Shepherd's Calendar to de- 
scribe Sidney's wooing of Frances Walsingham, the fair 
Pastorella ; his conquests, by his sweetness and grace, over 
the churlishness of rivals ; and his triumphant war against 
the monster spirit of ignorant and loud-tongued insolence, 
the " Blatant Beast " of religious, political, and social 
slander. 

Again, in Lord Grey of Wilton, gentle by nature, but so 
stern in the hour of trial, called reluctantly to cope not 
only with anarchy, but with intrigue and disloyalty, finding 
selfishness and thanklessness everywhere, but facing all 
and doing his best with a heavy heart, and ending his days 
prematurely under detraction and disgrace, Spenser had 
before him a less complete character than Sidney, but yet 
one of grand and severe manliness, in which were con- 
spicuous a religious hatred of disorder, and an unflinch- 
ing sense of public duty. Spenser's admiration of him 
was sincere and earnest. In his case the allegory almost 
becomes history. Arthur, Lord Grey, is Sir Arthegal, the 
Knight of Justice. The story touches, apparently, on some 
passages of his career, when his dislike of the French mar- 
riage placed him in opposition to the Queen, and even for 
a time threw him with the supporters of Mary. But the 
adventures of Arthegal mainly preserve the memory of 
Lord Grey's terrible exploits against wrong and rebellion 
in Ireland. These exploits are represented in the doings 



160 SPENSER. [chap. 

of the iron man Talus, his squire, with his destroying flail, 
swift, irresistible, inexorable ; a figure, borrowed and alter- 
ed, after Spenser's wont, from a Greek legend. His over- 
throw of insolent giants, his annihilation of swarming 
" rascal routs," idealize and glorify that unrelenting pol- 
icy, of which, though condemned in England, Spenser con- 
tinued to be the advocate. In the story of Arthegal, long 
separated by undeserved misfortunes from the favour of 
the armed lady, Britomart, the virgin champion of right, 
of whom he was so worthy, doomed in spite of his hon- 
ours to an early death, and assailed on his return from his 
victorious service by the furious insults of envy and mal- 
ice, Spenser portrays, almost without a veil, the hard fate 
of the unpopular patron whom he to the last defended and 
honoured. 

Ralegh, his last protector, the Shepherd of the Ocean, 
to whose judgment he referred the work of his life, and 
under whose guidance he once more tried the quicksands 
of the Court, belonged to a different class from Sidney or 
Lord Grey ; but of his own class he was the consummate 
and matchless example. lie had not Sidney's fine enthu- 
siasm and nobleness; he had not either Sidney's affecta- 
tions. He had not Lord Grey's single-minded hatred of 
wrong. He was a man to whom his own interests were 
much; he was unscrupulous; he was ostentatious; he was 
not above stooping to mean, unmanly compliances with 
the humours of the Queen. But he was a man with a 
higher ideal than he attempted to follow. He saw, not 
without cynical scorn, through the shows and hoUowness 
of the world. His intellect was of that clear and unem- 
barrassed power which takes in as wholes things which 
other men take in part by part. And he was in its high- 
est form a representative of that spirit of adventure int(j 



v.] THE FAERIE QtlEENE. 161 

the unknown and the wonderful of which Drake was the 
coarser and rougher example, realizing in serious earnest, 
on the sea and in the New World, the life of knight- 
errantry feigned in romances. With Ralegh, as with Lord 
Grey, Spenser comes to history ; and he even seems to 
have been moved, as the poem went on, partly by pity, 
partly by amusement, to shadow forth in his imaginary 
world, not merely Ralegh's brilliant qualities, but also his 
frequent misadventures and mischances in his career at 
Court. Of all her favourites, Ralegh was the one whom 
his wayward mistress seemed to find most delight in tor- 
menting. The offence which he gave by his secret mar- 
riage suggested the scenes describing the utter desolation 
of Prince Arthur's squire, Timias, at the jealous wrath of 
the Virgin Huntress, Belphoebe — scenes which, extrava- 
gant as they are, can hardly be called a caricature of 
Ralegh's real behaviour in the Tower in 1593. But Spen- 
ser is not satisfied with this one picture. In the last Book 
Timias appears again, the victim of slander and ill-usage, 
even after he had recovered Belphoebe's favour; he is 
baited like a wild bull, by mighty powers of malice, false- 
hood, and calumny ; he is wounded by the tooth of the 
Blatant Beast ; and after having been cured, not without 
difficulty, and not without significant indications on the 
part of the poet that his friend had need to restrain and 
chasten his unruly spirit, he is again delivered over to an 
ignominious captivity, and the insults of Disdain and 
Scorn. 

" Then up he made him rise, and forward fare, 
Led in a rope which both his hands did bynd ; 
Ne ought that foole for pity did him spare, 
But with his whip, him following behynd, 
Him often soourgVl, and forst his feete to fynd: 
8 



162 SPEXSEK. [chap. 

And other-whiles with bitter rnockes and mowes 

He would him seorne, that to his gentle niynd 

Was much more grievous then the others blowes : 

Words sharpely wound, but greatest griefe of scorning growes." 

Spenser knew Ralegh only in the promise of his ad- 
venturous prime — so buoyant and fearless, so inexhausti- 
ble in project and resource, so unconquerable by checks 
and reverses. The gloouiicr portion. of Ralegh's career 
was yet to come : its intrigues, its grand yet really gam- 
bling and unscrupulous enterprises, the long years of pris- 
on and authorship, and its not unfitting close, in the Eng- 
lish statesman's death by the headsman — so tranquil though 
violent, so ceremoniously solemn, so composed, so dignified 
— such a contrast to all other forms of capital punishment, 
then or since. 

Spenser has been compared to Pindar, and contrasted 
with Cervantes. The contrast, in point of humour, and 
the truth that humour implies, is favourable to the Span- 
iard : in point of moral earnestness and sense of poetic 
beauty, to the Englishman. What Cervantes only thought 
ridiculous, Spenser used, and not in vain, for a high pur- 
pose. The ideas of knight-errantry were really more ab- 
surd than Spenser allowed himself to see. But that idea 
of the gentleman which they suggested, that picture of 
human life as a scene of danger, trial, effort, defeat, recov- 
ery, which they lent themselves to image forth, was more 
worth insisting on, than the exposure of their folly and 
extravagance. There was nothing to be made of them, 
Cervantes thought ; and nothing to be done, but to laugh 
off what they had left, among living Spaniards, of pom- 
pous imbecility or mistaken pretensions. Spenser, knowing 
that they must die, yet believed that out of them might 
be raised something nobler and more real — enterprise, 



v.] THE FAERIE QUEENTJ. 163 

duty, resistance to evil, refinement, hatred of tlie mean 
and base. Tiie energetic and high - reaching manhood 
which he saw in the remarkable personages round him he 
shadowed forth in the Faerie Queene. He idealized the 
excellences and the trials of this first generation of Eng- 
lish gentlemen, as Bunjan afterwards idealized the piety, 
the conflicts, and the hopes of Puritan religion. Neither 
were universal types; neither were perfect. The man- 
hood in which Spenser delights, with all that was admira- 
ble and attractive in it, had still much of boyish incom- 
pleteness and roughness : it had noble aims, it had gen- 
erosity, it had loyalty, it had a very real reverence for pu- 
rity and religion ; but it was young in experience of a new 
world, it was wanting in self-mastery, it was often pedan- 
tic and self-conceited ; it was an easier prey than it ought 
to have been to discreditable temptations. And there is 
a long interval between any of Spenser's superficial and 
thin conceptions of character, and such deep and subtle 
creations as Hamlet or Othello, just as Bunyan's strong 
but narrow ideals of religion, true as they are up to a cer- 
tain point, fall short of the length and breadth and depth 
of what Christianity has made of man, and may yet make 
of him. But in the ways which Spenser chose, he will al- 
ways delight and teach us. The spectacle of what is heroic 
and self-devoted, of honour for principle and truth, set be- 
fore us with so much insight and sympathy, and combined 
with so much just and broad observation on those acci- 
dents and conditions of our mortal state which touch us 
all, will never appeal to English readers in vain, till we 
have learned a new language, and adopted new canons of 
art, of taste, and of morals. It is not merely that he has 
left imperishable images which have taken their place 
among the consecrated memorials of poetry and the house- 



164 SPENSER. fcHAP.v. 

hold tliouglits 6f all cultivated men. But lie has perma- 
nently lifted the level of English poetry by a great and 
sustained effort of rich and varied art, in which one main 
purpose rules, loyalty to what is noble and pure, and in 
which this main purpose subordinates to itself every feat- 
ure and every detail, and harmonizes some that by them- 
selves seem least in keeping with it. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SECOND PART OF THE FAERIE QUEENE. SPENSEr's LAST 

YEARS. 

[1590-1599.] 

The publication of the Faerie Queene in 1590 had made 
the new poet of the Shepherd's Calendar a famous man. 
He was no longer merely the favourite of a knot of en- 
thusiastic friends, and outside of them only recognized 
and valued at his true measure by such judges as Sidney 
and Ralegh. By the common voice of all the poets of 
his time he was now acknowledged as the first of living 
English poets. It is not easy for us, who live in these 
late times and are familiar with so many literary master- 
pieces, to realize the surprise of a first and novel achieve- 
ment in literature ; the effect on an age, long and eagerly 
seeking after poetical expression, of the appearance at last 
of a work of such power, richness, and finished art. 

It can scarcely be doubted, I think, from the bitter sar- 
casms interspersed in his later poems, that Spenser expect- 
ed more from his triumph than it brought him. It open- 
ed no way of advancement for him in England. He con- 
tinued for a while in that most ungrateful and unsatisfac- 
tory employment, the service of the State in Ireland ; and 
that he relinquished in 1593.^ At the end of 1591 he was 

^ Who is Edmondus Spemer, Prebendary of Effln (Elphin) ? in a 
list of arrears of first-fruits ; Calendar of State Papers, Ireland^ Dec 



166 SPENSER. [, hap. 

again at Kilcolman. He had written and probably sent to 
Ralegh, though he did not publish it till 1595, the reeord 
already quoted of the last two years' events, Colin Clout's 
come home again — his visit, under Ralegh's guidanee, to 
the Court, his thoughts and recollections of its great ladies, 
his generous criticisms on poets, the people and courtiers 
whom he had seen and heard of; how he had been daz- 
zled, how he had been disenelianted, and how he was come 
home to his Irish mountains and streams and lakes, to 
enjoy their beauty, though in a " salvage " and " foreign " 
land; to find in this peaceful and tranquil retirement 
something far better than tlie heat of ambition and the 
intrigues of envious rival lies ; and to contrast with the 
profanations of the name of love which had disgusted him 
111 a dissolute society, the higher and purer ideal of it 
which he could honour and pursue in the simplicity of 
his country life. 

And in Ireland the rejected adorer of the Rosalind of 
the Shephei'd's Calendar found another and still more 
perfect Rosalind, who, though she was at first inclined to 
repeat the cruelty of the earlier one, in time relented, and 
received such a dower of poetic glory as few poets have 
bestowed upon their brides. It has always appeared 
strange that Spenser's passion for the first Rosalind should 
have been so lasting, that in his last pastoral, C'o/m Clout's 
come home again, written so late as 1591, and published 
after he was married, he should end his poem by revert- 
ing to this long-past love passage, defending her on the 
ground of her incomparable excellence and his own un- 
worthiness, against the blam6 of friendly " shepherds," 

8, 1686, p. 222. Church preferments were under special circum- 
stances allowed to be held by laymen. See the Queen's "Instruc- 
tions," 1579 ; in Preface to Calendar of Carew MSS. 1589-1600, p. ci. 



VI.] J5EC0XD PART OF THE FAERIE QUEENE. 167 

\vitnesses of the " languors of his too long dying," and 
angry with her hard-heartedness. It may be that, accord- 
ing to Spenser's way of making his masks and figures sug- 
gest but not fully express their antitypes,^ Rosalind here 
bears the image of the real mistress of this time, the 
*' country lass," the Elizabeth of the sonnets, who was, in 
fact, for a" while as unkind as the earlier Rosalind. The 
history of this later wooing, its hopes and anguish, its 
varying currents, its final unexpected success, is the sub- 
ject of a collection of Sonnets, which have the disadvan- 
tage of provoking comparison with the Sonnets of Shake- 
spere. There is no want in them of grace and sweetness, 
and they ring true with genuine feeling and warm affec- 
tion, though they have, of course, their share of the con- 
ceits then held proper for love poems. But they want 
the power and fire, as well as the perplexing mystery, of 
those of the greater master. His bride was also immor- 
talized as a fourth among the three Graces, in a richly - 
painted passage in the last book of the Faerie Queene. 
But the most magnificent tribute to her is the great Wed- 
ding Ode, the Epithalamion^ the finest composition of its 
kind, probably, in any language : so impetuous and un- 
flagging, so orderly and yet so rapid in the onward march 
of its stately and varied stanzas ; so passionate, so flash- 
ing with imaginative wealth, yet so refined and self -re- 
strained. It was always easy for Spenser to open the 
floodgates of his inexhaustible fancy. With him, 

" The numbers flow as fast as spring doth rise." 

But here he has thrown into his composition all his power 

' " In these kind of historical allusions Spenser usually perplexes 
the subject : he leads you on, and then designedly misleads you." — . 
l^pton, quoted by Craik, iii. p. 92. 



1(38 SPENSER. [chap. 

of concentration, of arrangement, of strong and harmoni- 
ous government over thought and image, over language 
and measure and rhythm ; and the result is unquestion- 
ably one of the grandest lyrics in English poetry. We 
have learned to think the subject unfit for such free po- 
etical treatment ; Spenser's age did not. 

Of the lady of whom all this was said, and for whom 
all this was written, the family name has not been thought 
worth preserving. We know that by her Christian name 
she was a namesake of the great queen, and of Spenser's 
m(.)ther. She is called a country lass, which may mean 
anything ; and the marriage appears to have been solem- 
nized in Cork on what was then Midsummer Day, " Bar- 
naby the Bright," the day when " the sun is in his cheer- 
ful height," June ^, 1594. Except that she survived Spen- 
ser, that she married again, and had some legal quarrels 
with one of her own sons about his lands, we know noth- 
ing more about her. Of two of the children whom she 
brought him, the names have been preserved, and they in- 
dicate that in spite of love and poetry, and the charms of 
Kilcolman, Spenser felt as Englisl^men feel in Australia or 
in India. To call one of them Si/lvanus, and the other 
Peregrine, reveals to us that Ireland was still to him a 
" salvage land," and he a pilgrim and stranger in it ; as 
Moses called his first-born Gershom, a stranger here — " for 
he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land." 

In a year after his marriage, he sent over these memo- 
rials of it to be published in London, and they were en- 
tered at Stationers' Hall in November, 1595. The same 
year he came over himself, bringing with him the second 
instalment of the Faerie Queene, which v.as entered for 
publication the following January, 159|-. Thus the half 
of the projected work was finished ; and finished, as we 



VI.] SECOND PAKT OF THE FAERIE QUEENE. 169 

know from one of the Sonnets (80), before his marriage. 
After his long "race through Fairy land," he asks leave 
to rest, and solace himself with his " love's sweet praise ;" 
and then " as a steed refreshed after toil," he will " stout- 
ly that second worke assoyle." The first six books were 
published together in 1596. He remained most of the 
year in London, during which The Four Hymns on Love 
and Beauty, Earthly and Heavenly, were published ; and 
also a Dirge {Daphnaida) on Douglas Howard, the wife 
of Arthur Gorges, the spirited narrator of the Island Voy- 
age of Essex and Ralegh, written in 1591 ; and a "spousal 
verse " (Prothalamion), on the marriage of the two daugh- 
ters of the Earl of AVorcester, late in 1596. But he was 
only a visitor in London. The Prothalamion contains a 
final record of his disappointments in England. 

'' I, (whom sullein care, 
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay 
In Princes Court, and expectation vayne 
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away, 
Like empty shaddowes, did afflict my brayne,) 
Walkt forth to ease my payne 
Along the shoare of silver streaming Themmes — " 

His marriage ought to have made him happy. He pro- 
fessed to find the highest enjoyment in the quiet and re- 
tirement of country life. He was in the prime of life, 
successful beyond all his fellows in his special work, and 
apparently with unabated interest in what remained to be 
done of it. And though he could not but feel himself 
at a distance from the " sweet civility " of England, and 
socially at disadvantage compared to those whose lines 
had fallen to them in its pleasant places, yet nature, which 
he loved so well, was still friendly to him, if men wei-c 
wild and d.mgerous. He is never weary of praising the 
M 8* 



170 SPENSER. [cHAi , 

natural advantages of Ireland. Speukiug of the North, 
he says — 

"And sure it is yet a most bcautifull and sweet countrey as any is 
under heaven, seamed throughout with many goodly rivers, replenish- 
ed with all sortes of fish, most aboundantly sprinckled with many 
sweet Ilandes, and goodly lakes, like litle Inland Seas, that will carry 
even ships upon theyr waters, adorned with goodly woodes fitt for 
building of howses and shippes, soe comodiously, as that yf some 
princes in the world had them, they would soone hope to be lordes of 
all the seas, and ere long of all the world ; also full of good portes 
and havens opening upon England and Scotland, as inviting us to 
come to them, to see what excellent comodityes that countrey can 
atfoord, besides the soyle it self most fertile, fitt to yeeld all kind 
of fruite that shal be coinitted therunto. And lastly, the heavens 
most milde and temperat, though somewhat more moyst then the 
part toward the West." 

His own home at Kilcolman charmed and dehglited 
him. It was not his fault that its trout streams, its Mulhi 
and Fanchin, are not as famous as Walter Scott's Teviot 
and Tweed, or Wordsworth's Yarrow and Duddon, or that 
its hills, Old Mole, and Arlo Hill, have not kept a poetic 
name like Helvellyn and "Eildon's triple height." They 
have failed to become familiar names to us. But the 
beauties of his home inspired more than one sweet pas- 
toral picture in the Faerie Queene ; and in the last frag- 
ment remaining to us of it, he celebrates his mountains 
and woods and valleys as once the fabled resort of the 
Divine Huntress and her Nymphs, and the meeting-place 
of the Gods. 

There was one drawback to the enjoyment of his Irish 
country life, and of the natural attractiveness of Kilcolman. 
" Who knows not Arlo Hill ?" he exclaims, in the scene 
just referred to from the fragment on Mutahility. "Arlo, 
the best and fairest hill in all the holy island's heights/' 



VI.] SPENSER'S LAST YEARS. 171 

It was well known to all Englishmen who had to do with 
the South of Ireland. How well it was known in the Irish 
history of the time, may be seen in the numerous refer- 
ences to it, under various forms, such as Aharlo, Harlow, 
in the Index to the Irish Calendar of Papers of this trou- 
blesome date, and to continual encounters and ambushes 
in its notoriously dangerous woods. He means by it the 
highest part of the Galtee range, below which to the north, 
through a glen or defile, runs the " river Aherlow." Galty- 
more, the summit, rises, with precipice and gully, more 
than 3000 feet above the plains of Tipperary, and is seen 
far and wide. It was connected with the "great wood," 
"^.he wild region of forest, mountain, and bog which stretch- 
ed half across Munster from the Suir to the Shannon. It 
A'as the haunt and fastness of Irish outlawry and rebellion 
n the South, which so long sheltered Desmond and his 
•ollowers. Arlo and its " fair forests," harbouring " thieves 
md wolves," was an uncomfortable neighbour to Kilcolman. 
The poet describes it as ruined by a curse pronounced on 
i;he lovely land by the offended goddess of the Chase — 

" Which too too true that land's in-dwellers since have found." 

He was not only living in an insecure part, on the very 
border of disaffection and disturbance, but like every Eng- 
lishman living in Ireland, he was living amid ruins. An 
English home in Ireland, however fair, was a home on the 
sides of ^tna or Vesuvius : it stood where the lava flood 
had once passed, and upon not distant fires. Spenser has 
left us his thoughts on the condition of Ireland, in a paper 
written between the two rebellions, some time between 
1595 and 1598, after the twelve or thirteen years of so- 
called peace which followed the overthrow of Desmond,, 
and when Tyrone's rebellion was becoming serious. It 



172 SPENSER. [ciiAi'. 

seems to bave been miicb copied in manuscript, but, tbougb 
entered for publication in 1598, it was not printed till long 
after bis deatb, in 1633. A copy of it among tbe Irisb 
papers of 1598 sliows tbat it bad come under tbe eyes 
of tbe Englisb Government. It is full of curious obser- 
vations, of sbrewd political remarks, of odd and confused 
etbnograpby ; but more tban all tbis, it is a very vivid and 
impressive picture of wbat Sir Walter Ralegb called " the 
common woe of Ireland.'*' It is a picture of a noble 
realm, wbicb its inhabitants and its masters did not know 
wbat to do witb ; a picture of liopeless mistakes, misunder- 
standings, misrule ; a picture of piteous misery and suffer- 
ing on tbe part of a helpless and yet untameable and mis- 
chievous population — of unrelenting and scornful rigour 
on tbe part of their stronger rulers, which yet was abso- 
lutely ineffectual to reclaim or subdue them. " Men of 
great wisdom," Spenser writers, " have often wished that 
all that land were a sea-pool." Everything, people thought, 
bad been tried, and tried in vain. 

" Mairv, sioe there li.ive beene divers good plottes and wise coiin- 
sells cast alleready about reformation of that reahne ; but they say, 
it is the fatall desteny of that land, that noe purposes, whatsoever are 
meant for her good, will prosper or take good effect, which, whether 
it proceede from the very Genius of the soyle, or influence of the 
starres, or that Allraighty God hath not yet appoynted the time of 
her reformation, or that He reserveth her in this unquiett state still 
for some secrett scourdge, which shall by her come unto England, it 
is hard to be knowen, but yet much to be feared.'' 

The unchanging fatalities of Ireland appear in Spenser's 
account in all their w^cll-known forms; some of them, as 
if they were what we wei-e reading of yesterday. Through- 
out the work there is an honest zeal for order, an honest 
hatred of falsehood, sloth, treachery, and disorder. But 



VI.] SPENSERVS LAST YEARS. 3VS 

there does not appear a trace of consideration for what 
the Irish might feel or desire or resent. He is sensible, 
indeed, of English mismanagement and vacillation, of the 
way in which money and force were wasted by not being 
boldly and intelligently employed ; he enlarges on that 
power of malignity and detraction which he has figured in 
the Blatant Beast of the Faerie Queene : but of English 
cruelty, of English injustice, of English rapacity, of Eng- 
lish prejudice, he is profoundly unconscious. lie only 
sees that things are getting worse and more dangerous ; 
and though he, like others, has his "plot" for the subjuga^ 
tion and pacification of the island, and shrinks from noth- 
ing in the way of severity, not even, if necessary, from ex- 
termination, his outlook is one of deep despair. He cal- 
culates the amount of force, of money, of time, necessary 
to break down all resistance ; he is minute and perhaps 
skilful in building his forts and disposing his garrisons ; 
he is very earnest about the necessity of cutting broad 
roads through the woods, and building bridges in place of 
fords ; he contemplates restored churches, parish schools, 
a better order of clergy. But where the spirit was to 
come from of justice, of conciliation, of steady and firm 
resistance to corruption and selfishness, he gives us no 
light. What it comes to is, that with patience, temper, 
and public spirit, Ireland might be easily reformed and 
brought into order : but unless he hoped for patience, tem- 
per, and public spirit from Lord Essex, to whom he seems 
to allude as the person "on whom the eye of England is 
fixed, and our last hopes now rest," he too easily took for 
granted what was the real difficulty. His picture is exact 
and forcible, of one side of the truth ; it seems beyond the 
thought of an honest, well-informed, and noble-minded 
Enolishman that there was another side. 



174 SPENSER. [cHAr. 

But he was riglit in his estimate of the danger, and of 
the immediate evils which produced it. He was right in 
thinking that want of method, want of control, want of 
confidence, and an untimely parsimony, prevented severity 
from having a fair chance of preparing a platform for re- 
form and conciliation. He was right in his conviction of 
the inveterate treachery of the Irish Chiefs, partly the re- 
sult of ages of mismanagement, but now incurable. While 
he was writing, Tyrone, a craftier and bolder man than 
Desmond, was taking up what Desmond had failed in. 
He was playing a game with the English authorities whicli, 
as tilings then were, is almost beyond belief. He was out 
witting or cajoling the veterans of Irish government, who 
knew perfectly well what he was, and yet let him amuse 
them with false expectations — men like Sir John Norreys, 
who broke his lieart when lie found out how Tyrone had 
baffled and made a fool of him. Wishing to gain time 
for help from Spain, and to extend the rebellion, he revolt- 
ed, submitted, sued for pardon, but did not care to take it 
when granted, fearlessly presented himself before the Eng- 
lish officers while he was still beleaguering their posts, led 
the English forces a chase through mountains and bogs, 
inflicted heavy losses on them, and yet managed to keep 
negotiations open as long as it suited him. From 1594 to 
1598 the rebellion had been gaining ground; it had crept 
round from Ulster to Connaught, from Connaught to 
Leinster, and now from Connaught to the borders of 
Munster. But Munster, with its English landlords and 
settlers, was still, on the whole, quiet. • At the end of 
1597, the Council at Dublin reported home that "Mun- 
ster was the best tempered of all the rest at this present 
time ; for that though not long since sundry loose per- 
sons" (among them the base sons of Lord Roche, Spen- 



VI.] SPENSER'S LAST YEARS. 175 

ser's adversary in land suits) '* became Robin Hoods and 
slew some of the undertakers, dwelling* scattered in thatch- 
ed houses and remote places, near to woods and fastnesses, 
yet now they are cut off, and no known disturbers left who 
are like to make any dangerous alteration on the sudden." 
But they go on to add that they " have intelligence that 
many are practised withal from the North, to be of com- 
bination with the rest, and stir coals in Munster, whereby 
the whole realm might be in a general uproar." And 
they repeat their opinion that they must be prepared for 
a " universal Irish w^ar, intended to shake off all English 
government." 

In April, 1598, Tyrone received a new pardon; in the 
following August he surprised an English army near Ar- 
magh, and shattered it with a defeat the bloodiest and 
most complete ever received by the English in Ireland. 
Then the storm burst. Tyrone sent a force into Munster ; 
and once more Munster rose. It was a rising of the 
dispossessed proprietors and the whole native population 
against the English undertakers ; a " ragged number of 
tfogues and boys," as the English Council describes them ; 
rebel kernes, pouring out of the " great wood," and from 
A.rlo, the " chief fastness of the rebels." Even the chiefs, 
usually on good terms with the English, could not resist 
the stream. Even Thomas Norreys, the President, was 
surprised, and retired to Cork, bringing dow^n on himself 
a severe reprimand from the English Government. " You 
might better have resisted than you did, considering the 
many defensible houses and castles possessed by the under- 
takers, who, for aught we can hear, were by no means com- 
forted nor supported by you, but either from lack of com- 
fort from you, or out of mere cowardice, fled away from 
the rebels on the first alarm." "Whereupon," says Cox, 



1 76 SPENSER. [cnAP. 

the Irish historian, " the Munsterians, generally, rebel in 
October, and kill, murder, ravish and spoil without mercy ; 
and Tyrone made James Fitz-Thomas Earl of Desmond, 
on condition to be tributary to him ; he was the hand- 
somest man of his time, and is commonly called the Su- 
gan Earl." 

On the last day of the previous September (Sept. 30, 
1598), the English Council had written to the Irish Gov- 
ernment to appoint Edmund Spenser, Sheriff of the Coun- 
ty of Cork, " a gentleman d\yelling in the County of Cork, 
who is so well known unto you all for his good and com- 
mendable parts, being a man endowed with good knowl- 
edge in learning, and not unskilful or without experience 
in the wars." In October, Munster was in the hands of 
the insurgents, who were driving Norreys before them, and 
sweeping out of house and castle the panic-stricken Eng- 
lish settlers. On December 9th, Norreys wrote home a 
despatch about the state of the province. This despatch 
was sent to England by Spenser, as we learn from a sub- 
sequent despatch of Norreys of December 21.' It was 
received at Whitehall, as appears from Robert Cecil's en- 
dorsement, on the 24th of December. The passage from 
Ireland seems to have been a long one. And this is the 
last original document which remains about Spenper. 

What happened to him in the rebellion we learn gener- 
ally from two sources, from Camden's Ilistonj, and from 
Drummond of Hawthornden's Recollections of Ben Jon- 
son's conversations with him in 1619. In the Munster in- 
surrection of October, the new Earl of Desmond's follow- 
ers did not forget that Kilcolman was an old possession of 
the Desmonds. It was sacked and burnt. Jonson related 

' I am indebted for this reference to Mr. Hans Claude Hamilton. 
See also his Preface to Calendar of Iiisli Papers, 1 5*74-85, p. Ixxvi. 



VI.] SPENSER'S LAST YEARS. ITV 

that a little new-born cliild of Spenser's perished in the 
flames. Spenser and his wife escaped, and he came over 
to England, a ruined and heart-broken man. He died 
Jan. 16, 159f ; " he died," said Jonson, " for lack of bread, 
in King Street [Westminster], and refused twenty pieces 
sent to him by my Lord of Essex, saying that he had no 
time to spend them." He was buried in the Abbey, near 
the grave of Chaucer, and his funeral was at the charge of 
the Earl of Essex. Beyond this we know nothing ; noth- 
ing about the details of his escape, nothing of the fate of 
his manuscripts, or the condition in which he left his work, 
nothing about the suffering he went through in England. 
All conjecture is idle waste of time. We only know that 
the first of English poets perished miserably and prema- 
turely, one of the many heavy sacrifices wliich the evil fort- 
une of Ireland has cost to England ; one of many illus- 
trious victims to the madness, the evil customs, the ven- 
geance of an ill-treated and ill-governed people. 

One Irish rebellion brought him to Ireland, another 
drove him out of it. Desmond's brought him to pass his 
life there, and to fill his mind with the images of what 
was then Irish life, with its scenery, its antipathies, its 
tempers, its chances, and necessities. Tyrone's swept him 
from Ireland, beggared and hopeless. Ten years after his 
death, a bookseller, reprinting the six books of the Faerie 
Queene, added two cantos and a fragment. On Mutability^ 
supposed to be part of the Legend of Constancy. Where 
and how he got them he has not told us. It is a strange 
and solemn meditation on the universal subjection of all 
things to the inexorable conditions of change. It is 
strange, with its odd episode and fable which Spenser can- 
not resist about his neighbouring streams, its borrowings 
from Chaucer, and its quaint mixture of mythology with 



178 SPENSER. [chap. 

sacred and with Irish scenery, Olympus and Tabor, and 
his own rivers and mountains. But it is full of his power 
over thoujrht and imagery ; and it is quite in a different 
key from anything in the first six books. It has an under- 
tone of awe-struck and pathetic sadness. 

" What man that sees the ever whirling wheel 
Of Change, the whieh all mortal things doth sway, 
But that thereby doth find and plainly feel 
How Mutability in them doth play 
Her cruel sports to many men's decay." 

He imagines a miglity Titaness, sister of ITecate and Bel- 
lona, most beautiful and most terrible, who challenges uni- 
versal dominion over all things in earth and heaven, sun 
and moon, planets and stars, times and seasons, life and 
death ; and finally over the wills and thoughts and natures 
of the gods, even of Jove himself; and who pleads her 
cause before the awful Mother of all things, figured as 
Chaucer had already imagined her : 

" Great Nature, ever young, yet full of eld ; 
Still moving, yet unmoved from her stead ; 
Unseen of any, yet of all beheld. 
Thus sitting on her throne." 

He imagines all the powers of the upper and nether worlds 
assembled before her on his own familiar hills, instead of 
Olympus, where she shone like the Vision which " dazed " 
those "three sacred saints" on ''Mount Thabor." Before 
her pass all things known of men, in rich and picturesque 
procession ; the Seasons pass, and the Months, and the 
Hours, and Day and Night, Life, as " a fair young lusty 
boy," Death, grim and grisly — 

" Yet is he nought but parting of the breath, 
Ne ought to see, but like a shade to weene, 
Unbodied, unsoul'd, unheard, unseene — " 



vi.] SPENSER'S LAST YEARS. 1-79 

and on all of them the claims of the Titaness, Mutability, 
are acknowledged. Nothing escapes her sway in this 
present state, except Nature, which, while seeming to 
change, never really changes her ultimate constituent ele- 
ments, or her universal laws. But when she seemed to 
have extorted the admission of her powers, Nature silences 
her. Change is apparent, and not real ; and the time is 
coming when all change shall end in the final changeless 
change. 

" ' I well consider all that ye have said, 
And find that all things stedfastnesse do hate 
And changed be ; yet, being rightly wayd, 
They are not changed from their first estate ; 
But by their change their being do dilate, 
And turning to themselves at length againe, 
Do worke their owne perfection so by fate : 
Then over them Change doth not rule and raigne, 
But they raigne over Change, and do their states maintaine. 

" ' Cease therefore, daughter, further to aspire, 
And thee content thus to be rul'd by naee, 
For thy decay thou seekst by thy desire ; 
But time shall come that all shall changed bee. 
And from thenceforth none no more change shal see.'' 
So was the Titanesse put do^^^^e and whist, 
And Jove confirm'd in his imperiall see. 
Then was that whole assembly quite dismist, 
And Natur's selfe did vanish, whither no man wist." 

What he meant — how far he was thinking of those daring 
arguments of religious and philosophical change of which 
the world was beginning to be full, we cannot now tell. 
The allegory was not finished : at least it is lost to us. 
We have but a fragment more, the last fragment of his 
poetry. It expresses the great commonplace which so im- 
pressed itself on the men of that time, and of which his 



180 SPENSER. [chap. vi. 

works are full. No words could be more appropriMte to 
be the last words of one who was so soon to be in his own 
person such an instance of their truth. They are fit closing 
words to mark his tragic and pathetic disappearance from 
the high and animated scene in which his imagination 
worked. And they record, too, the yearning hope of rest 
not extinguished by terrible and fatal disaster : 

" When I bcthiiike me on that speech whyleare 
Of Mutabilitie, and well it way, 
Me secmes, that though she all unworthy were 
Of the Ileav'ns Rule ; yet, very sooth to say, 
In all things else she beares the greatest sway : 
Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle, 
And love of things so vaine to cast away ; 
Whose flowring pride, so fading and so fickle. 
Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle. 

"Then gin I thinkc on that which Nature sayd, 
Of that same time when no more Change shall be. 
But stedfast rest of all things, firmely stayd 
TTpon the pillours of Eternity, 
Ibat is contrayr to MutabiUtie ; 
For all that moveth doth in Change delight : 
But thenceforth all shall rest eternally 
With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight : 
! that great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabaoths sight." 



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THE STARTLING EXPLOITS OF DR. J. B. QUIES. From the French 
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120 Illustrations, pp. xii., 328. 8vo, Cloth, f I 75. 

BALDINE, AND OTHER TALES. By Karl Erdmaxn Edler. Trans- 
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FRANKLIN SQUAllE LIBRARY. (Latest n-sne,.) 

rrs. 

Glow-worm Tales. By James Payn 20' 

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Knight-Errant. A Novel. By Edna Lyall 20 

Charles Reade. A Memoir compiled chiefly from his Literary Re- 
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